


The Fifth Scenario

by Kagerou (Glensather)



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Dark, Drama, Eventual Relationships, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Israfel Special, Mental Time Travel, Multi, No these tags aren't wrong, Trauma, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-03-09 06:24:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13475574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glensather/pseuds/Kagerou
Summary: Sometimes for things to get better, they have to get so much worse. When Rei Ayanami is given the chance to set things right, she keeps screwing it up. But not this time. This time she's devised a plan. This time she's devised The Fifth Scenario.Too bad the universe keeps making her life worse.





	1. Foreward

Alright.  
... Okay, so I had a big long spiel planned for a foreword because I think it's super important for a story like this. Somehow, it's left me, so now I'm stuck here thinking.

This is... a different kind of story. Sort of.

I actually had no plan when I started off. I had no outline, no plot, no anything. The entire first scene was just a word vomit into NotePad that looked at me and said "wtfrudoin". I had been doing some binge reading of some Evangelion fanfiction, both new and old. I started at some old stomping grounds before moving back to fanfiction.net, then to a couple of new places that I hadn't cared about before, like this place and Sufficient Velocity. The entire time I was reading, I slowly begun to reform some fragmented memories I had.

See, I haven't so much as thought of Evangelion in, oh, about eight years. Yeah, that sounds about right. I'd left the fandom; I thought it was on the way out, anyway. There were a few stories I touched on, but to me the stories weren't from  _my_ fandom. They were epic, some were hilarious... but where was the darkness, the melancholy, the not-quite-crushing despair I was used to? Even in my time, stories with happy endings were few and far between and usually relegated to the WAFF category unless it was really good. Normally, stories ended the same way the series did: with Third Impact. Rei becomes God, gives Shinji the power of God, and everything goes to shit anyway. If there was an exception, it just altered the direction Third Impact took (I'm looking at you,  _Eva-R_ ).

But there was one story in particular that brought me back entirely, because I saw a premise, which reminded me of older versions of the same premise, and I was like... yeah, okay, let's do this! That story was  _Once More With Feeling_ , you can find it on the Sufficient Velocity forums. It's great, you should read it. Like right now. At least keep it on hand. Remember, happiness is either a warm gun or an Eva WAFF story, depending on your tastes.

The premise of that story - X Character goes back in time - has been done for ages. I remember way back when the concept got codified in the Eva community with the excellent  _Higher Learning_ and popularized with  _The 2nd Try_ and later,  _RE-TAKE_. But  _OMWF_ was different. It was fun. It was enjoyable. It... is a concept that by now has been done to death. But at least the author is good and competent!

So here's where I come in. I took a look at a lot of these Mental Time Travel stories and realized, hey, you know what? Rei's never been a central character. She might come along for the ride if there are multiples, but she never does it by herself. So I decided, let's make Rei the protagonist and send her back through time to give it a go.

Then you realize something.

_Would Rei even notice or care that she's doing it all over again?_

And that's how a word vomit became the grounds for this story.

* * *

 

With that out of the way, there are some things you need to understand about this story.

First: The Law of Narrative Causality stats that Rei can't just do canon NGE all over again. For one, boring. For two, she's already done that. She's done that  **48 times.**

Second: Things happen in this story. Happy things. Sad things. My tags are not wrong - life isn't just a happy paradise nor is it dark and brooding. Life has ups and downs. This isn't an appeal to "Oh this is so realistic", it just means that it's okay for this story to have ups, and to have downs. That's fine.

Third.

 

...Third.

 

 **Content Warning** **:** I chose not to use archive warnings because none of them really apply. The tag does.

 _ **This story contains implied and referenced child abuse. Child sexual abuse.**_ This isn't for shock value or grimdark. This is a serious exploration into what happens when a socially deficient individual has her trust broken into tiny little pieces by a man she assumed would never hurt her like this. This is her way of dealing with it, on top of trying to find a way to stop the main narrative of NGE happening all over again.

 _ **This story occasionally features bouts of suicide ideation and idolization.**_ Even the seemingly most stoic of us can fall apart and sink to our lowest.

 

Further content warnings will be applied on a chapter by chapter basis.

So, without further to do.

Let's get this show on the road.

* * *

 

One last thing, actually.

As the story continues, check back to the foreword occasionally. Something may have changed. Occasionally I'll post musings or whatnot, usually justifications for characters and such.

Thank you for reading.

Really, I mean it.


	2. Again and Again/Follow Her Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rei opens her eyes, and it starts all over again.

**The Fifth Scenario: Prologue  
Again and Again**  
  
\------------------------------

  
Rei Ayanami opened her eyes, stared at the ceiling that at this point was so familiar she knew exactly how many rivets held it together, and sighed. "Again," she said. "Again."  
  
Sitting up in bed, she reached for a notebook and pen that at this point she knew Doctor Akagi had left behind by accident and clicked the writing tool. It always helped to use this notebook, she had realized some time ago, to write down what the consequences of the changes she had implemented were. She had a photographic memory, but the girl had never really had a use for it before all of this had started. Now it had proven itself to be a valuable tool, as she could recall clearly everything between the time she woke up to when Third Impact began. The problem was that she couldn't remember a thing about Impact ITSELF - once she joined with Lilith and Adam, those two took over, and her role was over.  
  
She put pen to paper and began to write in a coded language she had thought of herself some time ago. The first time she wrote down her experiences, Commander Ikari had her shot in the back of the head, determining that the body Ayanami had been occupying was corrupt somehow, or that someone had gotten to her and was using her to mess with his version of Impact. Rei had decided to come up with a code after that; mostly just short handing a lot and using a mix of languages, but it seemed to do the trick. No one had been able to decipher it, and when pressed about it, Ayanami feigned ignorance. Most versions of Gendo had no reason to believe she was lying, after all, and never pushed the issue past that.  
  
Too many Cycles had come and gone now. Too many variations on the same theme. Wake up, go to school, save the world a about a dozen times, then end it in blood and Freudian motifs that would make psychologists around the world go "Are you okay?"  
  
Her life had become a huge science experiment. Sure, she was in -some- control of it, but she was already a lab rat, and this realization wasn't helping her mental state. The same thing, with some variation, was exactly like a scientist repeating the same experiments with slightly different circumstances and recording the data. Once she had realized what was going on, Ayanami had been curious. Now she was sick of it. Maybe there was a God, and this was her personal Hell for helping all of humanity die. Maybe this was HER, or rather Lilith, making her replay everything over and over again because she was never really supposed to be a part of Instrumentality, so there was no use for her afterwards. Since this life was all she knew, Lilith or Adam or the universe just kept shunting her into it.  
  
The obvious conclusion, and something Ayanami had thought of quite some time ago, was that she was supposed to avoid Third Impact somehow. The problem was that the End of Humanity involved no less than four different groups vying for control of it: Commander Ikari, SEELE, Adam and Lilith, and finally, Ikari's son and Eva Unit-01. Furthermore, each faction was perfectly capable of starting Third Impact completely independently of the other. She already knew that much before all of this had started. To completely stop Third Impact, Ayanami would have to kill or disable the Commander, the Mass Production Evangelions, Unit-01, and carve Adam out of Ikari's hand.  
  
...she  _could_  kill Lilith. Or herself, technically. However anyone looked at it, that was a possibility. Of course, to kill Lilith would require the cooperation of both the Evangelions and the pilots. She could probably get Sohryu's  _(Sohryu? Shikinami?)_ mom in on it, but Third Impact was what Yui Ikari had been working towards... basically all of her life. She LET herself be taken by Unit-01 as part of a greater scheme. The "final evolution of humanity" or somesuch, she had called it in a past Cycle. Of course, she had tried telling Commander Ikari this, and was rewarded with being flung off of a building and replaced.  
  
Ayanami sighed and tapped the pen against the paper, thinking. She ran over everything she had tried, what worked and what didn't. Dying, obviously couldn't work. Neither did killing anyone, really. She ran some tests where she let each Angel win, and the result was still "everyone dies at the end", just more horribly than before... well, Nagisa wasn't so bad, but it was still Third Impact under SEELE's control. Furthermore, attempting to start Third Impact early by letting Lilith absorb her didn't really take. Usually, Lilith would eat her, then about ten seconds later she would find herself in bed again. She tried that a good couple of dozen times before she decided it wouldn't work.  
She tried running away; no luck there, either. The furthest she had gotten was about a hundred kilometers outside the city before she felt a sharp stinging sensation, then blackness, then waking up amongst all the other clones.  
  
Befriending the other pilots helped her psyche, but didn't really avert Third Impact. It DID delay it, since nearly every Third Impact scenario required two things to happen: Sohryu needed to die, and Ikari's son needed to be mentally broken. Both of these were rendered null by helping both pilots move beyond their past traumas, and although she hadn't gotten THAT far, the few times she had tried it really messed with everyone's Plans at the end. Entering a sexual relationship wouldn't work: she had tried that once or twice with both pilots, and the end result was that one would become... she believed the word was "unhinged"... and would allow a different plan's timetable to accelerate.  
However... however...  
  
Ayanami nodded and began writing. It might not work, but a Plan was piecing itself together in her head. Getting intimate was unnecessary; she just needed to befriend them and let BOTH of them control Third Impact. If she could "fix" Ikari's son and Sohryu mentally, she could give them the power to choose, and if they were... not happy, but happier... then they might decide that life was worth living, and avert Third Impact altogether. It would not be easy, as there were some things that would be hard for the two of them to accept, but she would not lie to them. Not this time. In her own way, she had fallen in love with the pilots; she had, after all in various Cycles, entered everything from extremely casual to -extremely- intimate relationships with both of them. She wanted to see them happy. Well, "seeing" was a relative term, because there was still no way Ayanami was going to get out of this alive.  
  
Still. If the goal was to avert Third Impact, then she didn't need to stop it before it began. She just needed to give the power to someone who would reject it entirely. Ayanami nodded again, writing rapidly. Every time she returned from Third Impact, she had five months before Unit-00's activation test and six before Shinji Ikari arrived to Tokyo-3. She needed to prepare.  
  
This time she wouldn't fail. She couldn't.

  
  
\------------------------------

 

Rei was deep into her Plan when the expected knock at the door came. Shutting the notebook and sliding it under her pillow for safekeeping, she quickly put her skirt on and left her apartment. Section 2 agents would find the notebook but be unable to decipher it, and her plans, for now, would be safe.  
  
Three dozen Cycles before she realized what was going on. A few more before she came to grips. A lot more after she went insane, briefly. And still more as she tried to do whatever it took to stop this from happening again, not to mention the other Cycles that operated under their own rules.  
  
Had Ayanami been religious, she might have appreciated the irony; this was the 777th cycle, and it was the one where Rei had decided to use her knowledge to destroy God.

 

* * *

 

 

The Dummy Plug Plant was cold, dark, and wet. The LCL that occasionally splashed out of the tanks dripped along the glass and puddled on the floor. It was little wonder that the entire room didn't smell like death, Rei considered as she buttoned her shirt up. She stared at the clones in the tank as they stared back at her with empty eyes; eyes devoid of souls. Their mouths were open as if laughing at her. They probably were, she decided.  
  
She felt a sting as she regarded them. Touching the side of her face, she felt the beginnings of a bruise forming on her cheek. That would be unfortunate. She shivered, but because it was cold or not she wasn't entirely sure. One of the clones floated to the glass that kept them inside and started tapping on the glass.  _Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap._  
  
"Yui." He had called her "Yui."  
  
Rei shivered again as she finished buttoning the shirt. Reaching down and grabbing her skirt, she quietly slipped it on and played with the button on it. Where were her socks? Ah, there they were. Rei grabbed those, too, ignoring the pain she felt on her insides. Everything hurt, and her head was threatening to explode. She felt herself wince again.  _Damnit, now I'm crying_.  
After making sure her skirt was set, she slowly put her socks on. Bending took effort.  _It wasn't supposed to hurt, right? Right?_  
  
Rei wasn't sure about a lot of things right now. Something had happened.  
  
"Yui." she heard his voice again as he whispered it in her ear. A second clone joined the first, tapping away mindlessly.  _Tap-tap. Tap-tap. Tap-tap. Tap-tap._  
  
Rei felt  _dirty_.  
  
She didn't remember what happened. No, that wasn't right. She refused to remember what had happened. She fought it, she fought it so hard. The injury on her face was proof of that.  
Another feeling joined the first, about the same time another clone joined the other two.  _Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap._  
  
Betrayal. It was a sense of betrayal. Irony of ironies, since in the end she would betray him. She always did. Always gave the choice of Impact to someone else. She always felt guilty when she did, like she was betraying the trust of a loved one.  
  
But isn't that what he had just done to her?  
  
"Yui."  
  
He had always been a lot of things. Rei tied her ribbon. Driven, focused, willing to sacrifice everyone, even Rei, to get his beloved Yui back. She always knew she was replaceable. That was her purpose. The only thing that hadn't changed was that she had found a purpose in life that she didn't want to be replaced for.  
  
Rei stopped fighting the tears and let them fall. It didn't matter. No one was here to make her feel worse.  
  
A fourth clone joined, this one putting both hands on the glass and staring at her. Rei was pretty sure it hated her. They all did. Another emotion, one she was much less used to, wormed its way into her mind.  
  
Anger. Anger, betrayal, shame, and guilt. Rei put on the light-blue jumper and glared at the clones. "What are you looking at?" she hissed.  
  
And all the Rei clones stared at her and  _grinned_.

 

* * *

 

  
The walk back to the elevator was always a haunting experience. That said, she always made it a point to stop at the failed Evangelions. Something about seeing their lifeless corpses brought peace. Maybe it was because, being dead, they didn't have to suffer existence anymore. If being human was painful, being an Evangelion, a shadow of an Angel, had to be even worse. Of course, without a soul Evas probably didn't have an opinion, one way or the other. Their suffering was over; Rei wondered how long hers could continue.  
  
Sometimes when it was especially quiet, she thought she could hear some of them still breathing. Impossible, of course. Rei walked by them, eventually coming to her "old room"; not entirely true, but close enough, she supposed. It was the place she was contained when she was going through what Gendo had called "soul transfer psychosis" or something like it; when her mind and her soul would wage an internal war. She was designed to be a vessel for Lilith's soul, so oftentimes her mind was able to suppress Lilith's impulses. It seemed impossible, and even now, Rei was uncertain that was the truth, but she normally let it go. But now? Now it was a question she wanted answered. She would not find those answers here.  
  
_I wonder if merging with Lilith gives me those answers... but I have no memory of anything after merging with her._  
  
There used to be a mirror down here. Rei found it buried under a stack of boxes in the corner. She pulled it out and looked at herself; not out of vanity, but to make sure that the damage wasn't long term. The last thing she needed was people asking questions right now; not out of any loyalty to the Commander - THAT had flown out the window as of about an hour ago - but because Rei's Scenario required her to be in control of herself. That was all there was to it. Besides, in this Cycle  _that_  had clearly been going on for some time, so it wouldn't make any sense for her to have another loss of control like that. Explaining away the purpled bruise at school would be easy enough, not that anyone would care. Well, that girl Horaki would be concerned, but she wasn't a part of the Scenario anyway. She didn't matter in the long run, although her presence was useful for Asuka.  
  
Rei tried to fix her hair a bit. She didn't like the way it looked normally anyway ( _when did I start caring about the way I looked?_ ); being in LCL just exacerbated that. It was hopeless. She set the mirror down on a nearby box, pausing only because there was writing on the back of it. She tilted her head, curious; it was her handwriting, but Rei had no recollection of ever writing this in any Cycle. She stared at the writing; it was her own coded language. That was also odd; she was certain that had been an invention of hers long after she had left this room in any Cycle. It wouldn't make any sense to anyone else, so anyone observing her might have assumed she was writing gibberish.  
  
Rei picked it up. The writing was done with a nearly empty marker. Deciphering it was easy enough, despite never having written this. How peculiar. It was almost word for word the same Scenario she had already envisioned and set in motion, but Shinji and Asuka's names were missing, just "Second Child" and "Third Child"; furthermore, in this Cycle Rei must have assumed both Children would be female, given how she used feminine pronouns to describe "The Third". Was it possible, however unlikely, that Rei in this Cycle that already devised some version of her Scenario?  
  
This COULD be Lilith messing around. Since Rei had no way of knowing, it was also possible that since in a way she was Lilith, that the "Second Angel" was being dragged back in time with her. If Lilith was aware of this, then she wasn't telling; then again, if she was telling, would Rei be able to understand? Lilith was, after all, an odd creature of sorts. Rei tried to organize her thoughts, but no memory of ever writing this surfaced. Again, that wasn't really out of line; when jumping into a new Cycle, Rei just as often had her memories partially reorganized to fit the parameters; never enough for her to forget the past, but just a nudge here and there.  
  
Rei set the mirror back down and walked out of the room, thoughts turning over. Curious. She would have to make a note of this when she returned home. Maybe it was time to replace the lock on the front door. Maj-  _Captain_  Katsuragi would know how, and if she didn't she would know someone who did. Rei ran her fingers along the wall of the long hallway that led to the elevator out of Terminal Dogma. Practically it needed to be done months ago; it was dangerous for a Pilot to be so easily accessible. Perhaps while she was at it she could clean up her apartment a bit.  
  
Rei frowned. Odd. Jumping through Cycles had increased her self-awareness but never yet to this point. She had stopped thinking of herself as replaceable a long time ago, although she still struggled with the concept of finding herself worthy to live. She stopped at the elevator door and summoned it with her keycard. It was the cause of her relationships with the other two, romantically or otherwise, to fall apart at some point in many Cycles. Even when they managed to bury their personal demons, it was hard to reconcile Rei having the same issues. Despite there being plenty of Cycles where Shinji, Asuka, or both had managed to open up with each other and start talking about their problems, Rei never could. Of course a lot of it had to do with secrecy; she rarely could bring herself to tell them of her true nature, and of those rare times it often gave her hostility and confusion in return.  
  
They just weren't prepared to deal with that; most people probably weren't. Even those who knew often cracked under the stress - Doctor Akagi was a prime example of that. The existence of the Dummy Plug system would be enough to drive many people mad once they learned of its true workings. It also dehumanized Rei, both personally and from others. She was more often seen as a THING than as a person.  
  
Rei didn't like that. She began to tap her foot impatiently as she waited for the elevator. She was slowly finding that she didn't like a lot of things. Again, this was odd. This was out-of-character for her. In most Cycles Rei was usually the bastion of quiet stoicism. If Shinji was the light and Asuka was the heat, she was the water. That was just how things went. But she was finding it harder to keep control of herself. She wanted to be let loose, to be allowed to feel and be emotional with the others. She had made progress; after all, she had nearly a thousand years to work on it. It was always an uphill battle, however, and it wasn't easy. It was like learning to breathe - it came naturally to everyone else, but for Rei it was the most foreign of concepts.  
  
Not that she didn't feel, it was just harder for her. She was much better at the physical aspects of emotion than the mental ones. She knew when to smile, when to hold someone to make them feel loved or touch someone to make them feel wanted - but she didn't know how to express that through words or feelings. She DID love her fellow pilots, of that she had no doubt... but she was weak at expressing it.  
  
The fact that, to her, she was losing control of herself was making it harder. She narrowed her eyes at the elevator door as it seemed to take forever to show up. Even now, she felt at the edges of her mind a burning impatience, a crack in her usual stoic self. This was abormal. Was it the sudden trauma of what Gendo had just done to her? Was it the mental stress of repeating the same thing, over and over again? Was it both, or neither?  
  
She needed to be home to think. This elevator was taking too long! Rei grit her teeth.  _What the hell, was it always like this?!_  
  
There it was again. Rei took a deep breath, calming herself down. Abnormal. This was absolutely abnormal. She needed to... calm down? Even the words sounded absurd to her. No one had ever told HER to calm down. It was usually the opposite! This had to be related to past events. Had to be.  
  
...it had to be.  
  
Rei bit the inside of her lip, hard enough to almost draw blood. The pain caused her to stop tapping her foot and glaring lasers into the door. It refocused her. It relaxed her.  
  
Shaking her head more out of confusion than disbelief, Rei found it easy to pretend she felt nothing when the door to the elevator finally, mercifully opened... and Ritsuko Akagi stood on the other side, clipboard in one hand with the other in a pocket of her lab coat. Ritsuko, at this early stage, didn't hate Rei just yet. That would come much later. That said, past experiences told Rei that the "good doctor" (Asuka had a much worse name for her) found the First Child extremely creepy and disturbing to be around. For her part, Ritsuko managed to hide the look of mild discomfort on her face when the two locked eyes. She took a step back, allowed Rei to step into the elevator, and pressed the button that would lead back up to Central Dogma.  
  
Does she know? Akagi was the Pilots' personal physician, she HAD to know if this had been going on for quite some time. If that much was true, then she was obviously unconcerned for Rei's well-being, same as always; just enough to ensure that she could continue to pilot, and even then, with the Dummy Plug plant that wasn't really necessary. It was mostly for keeping up appearances: if she had zero care for Rei but much more for Shinji and Asuka, people would notice, and that would make the secrecy necessary for Gendo's Scenario begin to fall apart.  
  
But what if she doesn't? That was a possibility, of course.   
  
She must have been fidgeting, because Ritsuko stopped reading whatever she had on her clipboard and looked down at the First Child in front of her. "Are you okay?" she asked. She couldn't keep the mild discomfort that just LOOKING at Rei did to her.  
  
"..." Rei didn't answer at first. If Ritsuko didn't know, then telling her could endanger both of their lives. If she did know, she would just laugh at her, probably literally. "I do not feel well," she finally said.  
  
"The memory transfer often does that to you," the doctor replied. "You know this, Rei. We talk about it every time you and Commander Ikari go down there."  
  
"Yes," That didn't tell Rei anything one way or the other. What if she told her, and Ritsuko told her that's what she deserved? She DIDN'T deserve that... right? "I apologize, Doctor. The Commander did something that confused me earlier," may as well 'test the waters' as Asuka would put it.  
  
"I can't imagine Commander Ikari doing anything that would get under YOUR skin," Ritsuko said, and Rei noted the curiosity in her voice. "The two of you are inseparable. Always have been. Odd that he wasn't down here this time with you. I was hoping to... talk to him about things."  
  
_Ah, so that was it._  Rei wasn't blind, after all. She quickly sorted through her memories; would she, at this point in time, know she was modeled off of Yui? It wasn't really a secret, but it had never come up before.  
  
"The Commander..." Rei began, looking at the door and feeling the lump in her throat return. If she broke now, then that could jeopardize everything.  
  
"...Doctor, does the name Yui mean anything to you?"  
  
"Where did you hear that?" Ritsuko asked, a little too quickly. Rei swallowed. Was she really going to go down this road with someone who could barely tolerate her? She felt that she needed to tell someone, but there was no one in NERV she could trust. She needed to wait until she established a bond with the pilots in this Cycle, and that was only IF she told anyone. She still wasn't certain she wanted to.  
  
"The Commander called me Yui," she stated, keeping her voice as level as possible. "While we were in the Dummy Plug Plant."  
  
"I... I see," Rei kept her eyes fixed on the elevator door. "Rei, do you know who you are?"  
  
"I am Rei Ayanami, First Child, Pilot of Evangelion Unit-01," she replied automatically.  _Wait, Unit ONE_?  
  
"...and?"  
  
"And I am the vessel for Lilith's soul, the Keystone in Commander Ikari's Third Impact," Rei continued. "I do not understand why you are asking me these things, Doctor Akagi."  
  
"When you were created, GEHIRN had to fuse human DNA with Lilith's DNA. You know this much," Rei nodded. "Although there were many options, Commander Ikari used scraps of human DNA found in Unit-01 instead of any of our volunteers. He said it was to preserve your memory, or at least that's what he tells me. Most of your human genetic material was fused with Lilith's to create you. Due to a fault in the cloning process, you just so happen to look like Yui Ikari."  
  
"I see," Rei was feeling impatient again.  
  
"The key here is that although you look like Yui Ikari, the only things that really remain from her genetic makeup is your facial and bone structure. The similarities stop there, as Angel DNA has a habit of reconstituting whatever genetic material it might have on hand for its own purposes. You are for the most part Lilith; you were harvested from her the same way your clones are. Any similarities you might have to Yui Ikari begin and end with your appearance," Ritsuko briefly paused. "Why did he call you that?"  
  
"I do not know, Doctor Akagi."  
  
"Rei," Ritsuko's voice was serious. "What happened down there that made him call you Yui?"  
  
"I do not know," Rei repeated.  
  
"Rei," Ritsuko's voice was more commanding. "I already have to field questions about when the two of you disappear. What did he do?"  
  
Rei turned around. "I do not know, Doctor," she said honestly. Rei still couldn't figure out what she had done to deserve this, after all. Ritsuko touched Rei's bruised cheek, and Rei had to keep from hissing in pain. She stared blankly at the zipper on Ritsuko's shirt.  
  
"Why did he hit you?" she asked. "Don't even try to cover for him, Rei. There's nothing down there that could do this to you. I know he's been coming a bit unglued lately but there's no reason for him to take it out on you."  
  
"I scratched him," Rei answered honestly. "...it was an accident. He did not mean to,"  _Why am I DEFENDING him_?  
  
The elevator doors opened. Central Dogma had been reached. Rei turned on her heel and walked out of the elevator, but Ritsuko grabbed her by the collar. Rei froze by reflex. She suddenly realized, with stinging clarity, that she could snap Ritsuko in half by expanding her AT Field just a little bit. She could honestly do the same to Gendo, so why did either of them feel the need to put their hands on her?  
  
...why didn't she just do that to Ikari in the first place?  
  
Furthermore, why was she  _so angry_?  
  
"Let go of me," she hissed.  
  
"You need to talk about it, Rei," Ritsuko pressed. "Whatever is bothering you."  
  
_That's really rich, coming from you of all people._  "I just wish to go home, Doctor Akagi. Let go of me."  
  
"Rei..." Ritsuko's voice was threatening. Rei reached behind her and pulled Ritsuko's hand off of the collar, though she was certain that if Doctor Akagi really cared that much she would have a much stronger grip.  
  
"That is enough. I am leaving," Rei stated. She continued to walk. Ritsuko went to follow her, but Rei was already down one of Central Dogma's many myriad corridors. An announcement over the PA required her attention at Unit-01's bay, and the doctor decided to let the wayward First Child go.  
  
Rei's eyes had turned cold as she nearly marched down several random hallways, determined to put as much distance between herself and Doctor Akagi as much as possible. She didn't want to be lectured right now; she just wanted to lay down in bed. She would be safe there. Well, safer, anyway. It couldn't be any worse than here. Now, there was an access port somewhere around here, a hidden one that was designed for the pilots. It was down this left, then a right, then...  
  
Rei slowed down, the very door she was looking for hidden behind a false wall. She never understood the need for the false walls. She pushed it open and stepped into a second, much smaller elevator, this one barely wide enough for herself and one other. She hit the button designated for the surface, and the lift shot up. Being designed for quickly getting the pilots to the Geofront in the event of an Angel attack, these lifts were much faster than the elevator designed for the descent into Terminal Dogma. Rei allowed herself to breathe in here; with no room for another person except someone roughly her size, she felt at ease here. She was at peace. She also found herself completely changing her mind about going home; she wasn't safe there. She remembered the broken lock. Anyone could just let themselves in. Shinji had done so before, and in this Cycle there was no one stopping Commander Ikari from just waltzing in and forcing her again.  
  
Rei felt her breaths catching, and she started shaking.  _Wait, what_? Was this a panic attack? She had only read about them before. The lift stopped at the surface. Rei stepped out and found herself within a good walking distance from her home. It would take over an hour, assuming she didn't get stopped at all. The hour was late; the sun had already set, and the moon was shining bright in the sky.  
  
"I do not feel safe here," she decided. The lift door behind her closed quietly, another false wall springing back up from the slot in the concrete. Looking around, she picked a direction and began walking.  
  
Rei's phone began to ring. She pulled it out of her pocket. "AKAGI, DOCTOR RITSUKO" it read. Rei dropped the phone in a nearby puddle and continued walking. It wouldn't be long before Section 2 would start showing up, but this far before Sachiel's attack, they would be sparsely staffed, as no one would have a reason to kill any of the pilots. She could probably safely ignore them for a while before she decided she wanted to go home... if she wanted to go home.  
  
Maybe I shoud just end it here, she thought. Get Unit-01, remove the Lance, and merge with Lilith. Then I wouldn't have to do this. Rei continued to entertain the thought as she continued walking, taking random turns every couple of blocks or so, sometimes doubling back just because she could, and generally aimlessly wandering around.  
  
She managed to walk quite a distance in Tokyo-3, she realized as she looked up. Her natural instinct to flee home... had taken her to the complex Misato Katsuragi lived in.  
  
Curious.  
For some reason it just made her sad.

 

* * *

 

 

The lights were on. Rei stared at them, considering how bad of an idea this was. Too late now, she supposed. She rang the doorbell.  
  
Misato Katsuragi was always notorious for her inhibitions regarding alcohol. She probably wouldn't be in a good position to... to what? What was Rei even here for? It was too early in the Cycle for any sort of bond to have developed between them. The two of them would hardly have even spoken to each other before the aftermath of Unit-00's activation test, but... hm. Rei told Doctor Akagi she was the pilot of  _Unit-01_ , not  _Unit-00_. The reflex had come from recovered memories of THIS Cycle, not of ones before. Certainly there were Cycles where she had to pilot Unit-01 before, but never had she been its pilot by default. It was always reserved for Shinji; she only took control in emergencies.  
  
_Wait, how am I going to explain the bruise?_  
  
The door opened. Leaning against the wall, confused, was Katsuragi, beer in one hand, hair wrapped in a towel, and a bathrobe thrown on haphazardly. "Uh? Ayanami?" she raised an eyerbrow. "Is that you? What happened to your face?"  
  
Rei averted her eyes. Misato was... being unmodest. "Yes, ma'am," she replied. "I apologize. It is late, I was going to ask if you could take me home."  
  
"And what about your face? That bruise is huge, Ayanami." Misato clicked her tongue as she stared at it. Rei kept her eyes turned away from the Captain. "Well don't just stand there, come on in," Misato grabbed Rei's hand and more or less pulled the small girl in. Rei only gave the weakest of struggles as she let Misato pull on her, shutting the door behind the two.  _Should I be worried? No, I can trust the Captain. She has never hurt me._  "Let me get some clothes on, Ayanami. Come inside, just be warned... it's a bit of a mess."  
  
"Yes, ma'am, I understand," Rei nodded and followed Misato in, stopping at the end of the miniature hallway to look around. She managed to keep neutral, but she was surprised; she knew Shinji and Asuka were the true homebodies of the apartment, but never expected Misato to be this messy. Even Rei wasn't this disorganized. She gingerly stepped by a pile of trash and sat down at the table.  _I didn't take my shoes off..._  
  
"Stay here, okay?" Rei nodded again, compliant. Misato set the beer can down on the table and walked away, disappearing into her bedroom. Rei stared at the can. Odd, it wasn't opened yet. Sitting next to the beer can was a manila envelope with a stack of papers inside. Curious, Rei pulled it closer and opened it. Misato probably wouldn't get mad. It was nothing Rei cared for anyway - mostly it consisted of Misato signing off on deployment strategies, fixed defenses, and construction of weapon racks for the Evangelions. At this stage, only the Pallet Rifle and Progressive Knife had been approved, but Rei noted that Misato had drawn a blueprint for what she would know as Asuka's Spike Launcher and Progressive Axe.  
  
Rei didn't even realize Misato had any creative talent. Some of the design elements would have changed between this initial design and the finished product, but it was definitely there.  
  
Rei continued to absently flip through the pages, finally settling on a page that she was quite interested in. Attached was a picture of herself along with a general report on her physical and mental characteristics. Rei stared at the picture of herself. She never understood physical attraction that well - if you cared about someone, what did it matter what they looked like? Rei removed the small picture from the paper clip and held it up, staring at it. This was the face of the person that, in Cycles past, others had cared for. Even Gendo in his own way had cared about her in other Cycles... or at the least, didn't treat her as a...  
  
Rei shook her head of the thought and continued to stare at the picture. If memory served, this picture would have been taken last September, as the files would be updated every six months. That meant she was due for another picture this month to coincide with her "birthday". Rei frowned at the photograph. The Rei in this picture looked almost identical, except there was something off. It wouldn't be noticeable to anyone who didn't know her intimately, but the Rei in this photo was... so angry. She was downright  **furious** , in fact.  
  
Rei could surmise a few guesses as to why. She placed the photograph back and read over her own report. Everything was normal, or at least within acceptable parameters, with the only major difference being that she was a few kilograms underweight. It wasn't life-threatening but it was unusual for her, as she at least ate enough to maintain a healthy body weight, as the stress of piloting the Evangelion was hard even on her body. There was nothing in the physical about... about THAT...  
  
Part of the physical evaluation was blacked out. Presumably it had to do with her Angel DNA.  
  
Her psych evaluation was also mostly the same as it usually was. Quiet, reserved, and timid. Submissive to a fault. The only difference was that she was prone to emotional outbursts of anger and had displayed mild suicidal tendencies. Rei had no idea what constituted a "mild" suicidal tendency but she didn't question it either, as this report was already quite enlightening. Rei, at least in this Cycle, was supposed to be harboring anger issues, which explained in part her outburst at the Dummy Plug Plant.  
  
There was another blacked out section on the psych evaluation, which was curious. The report was signed off by Doctor Akagi AND Commander Ikari. That was also unusual; normally only the doctor signed her reports. That meant Commander Ikari was either present for or had to approve of the reports, neither of which was a comforting thought. Rei placed her file back with the rest of the papers, having committed the report to memory. She flipped to another page and her breath caught.  
  
It was the first time she had seen Asuka in this Cycle, and she looked... so  **happy**. Her smile was full of life, arrogant, and her eyes were bright. She showed none of the darkness that hid within. She had never been physically attracted to Asuka before - their attraction was more to fill a psychological than a physical need - but even Rei had to admit that Asuka was extremely attractive in this picture... or at least she was to Rei.  
  
"You like what you see?"  
  
Rei made a sound that vaguely resembled "eep!" and shut the manila folder, pushing it back across the table. "Apologies, I was curious," she said quickly. "I did not mean to intrude."  
  
"It's fine, it's not like you don't need to see any of this," Misato turned the folder back around and patted it. Rei looked up at her Commanding Officer, noting that she had changed into a tank top and bicycle shorts, and that her hair was a more vibrant shade of violet than normal. "Like it?" Misato asked with a grin as she sat down. "It was time to re-dye my hair."  
  
"It is... unique," Rei decided. She never considered that Misato dyed her hair like Doctor Akagi did. The Captain fingered the tab of the beer can, looking at it from the corner of her eye, and apparently decided against it, pushing it aside. She smiled at Rei.  
  
"You were awfully focused on Asuka there," she teased. Rei looked down at her hands on the table.  
  
"She is..." Rei began, finding herself at a loss.  
  
"You think she's hot, huh?"  
  
"Captain, she did not appear to be particularly warm, no."  
  
Misato sighed and shook her head. "What I mean is- never mind. So you wanna tell me about that bruise you got?"  
  
_Yes, yes please, I need to tell someone. I need to tell people what happened, what he DID to me, how much it HURT and I-_  
  
"I had... an accident," she said flatly. "It is embarrassing."  
  
"Ah," Misato replied. Looking back up, she could see the questioning look in the older woman's eyes, but she decided not to push it. "You... didn't get into another fight again, did you?"  
  
_ANOTHER fight?_  "No, ma'am," Rei said, quiet.  
  
"Alright," Misato shrugged. "I won't push it. What I DO want to know is why you ended up here of all places. I've only seen you here like once, and I'm surprised you remember how to get here."  
  
"I did not mean to show up," Rei told the Captain. "I was walking about the city and found myself here."  
  
"And you just... decided to visit?" Misato asked, opening the folder and flipping through about two thirds of it, stopping at a report that apparently needed her signature. She began to read it, taking the pen she had placed on the sheet of paper as a bookmark of sorts and clicking it open. "That's not like you. You don't just visit people, I understand."  
  
"I..." I wanted to be alone. "I simply needed a ride home, Captain. I did not mean to disturb your work."  
  
"It's fine," Misato waved her off, signing the paper with her other hand. She turned the page. "Once I finish here, I'll take you home. You realize it's like eleven on a school night, right?"  
  
"I did not," Rei said.  
  
"Where's your phone?"  
  
_I threw it in some water because it made me angry._  "I lost it," Rei lied.  
  
"Ah, sucks," Misato signed another page and turned it over. "I'm sure NERV will give you another one. Have you eaten?"  
  
No. "Yes, ma'am," Rei nodded. "Captain, I am curious about something."  
  
"Alright, shoot," sign and flip.  
  
"I read my report," Rei began. "It said that I have 'mild suicidal tendencies'. What did that mean? I do not believe I have ever consciously tried to kill myself."  
  
"Ah," Misato put the pen down and folded her hands on the table. "You saw that. Well, I'm not a doctor, Ayanami, so I can only go by what Rits told me. She says that you occasionally display characteristics that are related to someone who - while you don't want to actually die - you show a disregard for your well being. It's often small things like standing on the opposite end of the safety line while waiting on trains, or getting into fights with boys twice your size, or not telling me Commander Ikari hit you, or throwing your phone in a puddle and pretending you lost it."  
  
_Oh._  "I see," Rei stared very hard at her hands.  
  
"You didn't have to lie to me, Ayanami," Misato stated. "Section 2 picked up your signal about ten seconds after you hit the surface, and Rits called me after she couldn't get ahold of you. They're pretty good at their job. I told everyone to back off of you, see where you ended up. You clearly didn't want to be bothered."  
  
Rei moved to stand. "I apologize, Captain, I will go and-"  
  
"Don't move," it wasn't a suggestion. "Sit." Rei sat back down and stared at Misato. Contrary to her tone of voice, Misato didn't look angry. Rather, she looked concerned. "Ayanami- Rei, can I call you Rei?" The First Child nodded. "Rei, you've been getting more anxious and easily upset lately. I'm not gonna pretend to know about your personal life and how to fix it. I don't know why he hit you, and really I don't care because the fact is he DID and that sucks and I'll deal with him myself if I have to," Rei averted her eyes again, looking at her hands. Misato reached across the table and placed her hands on Rei's. "Look, I know you don't know me that well, but if you ever need someone to talk to, I'm here for you, Rei. I know it seems hopeless - you've been subjected to what seems like an infinite amount of tests and bullshit. I know they want you to try and activate Unit-00 when its repaired and that's probably got to stress you out," she squeezed Rei's hands, and the lump in her throat reared its ugly head again.  
  
"Captain, I..." she shuddered. "I do not know what to do anymore."  
  
"What do you mean?" Misato asked quietly.  
  
Everything she had been putting off thinking about, waiting until she got home, flooded in and let themselves known, a jumble of lifetimes and memories converging in her head all at once. Flashes of images fundamentally incompatible with each other but no less accurate assaulted her senses: Unit-00/-01/-02 eating Zeruel, Unit-01 crushing Touji/Hikari's Entry Plug with one hand while simultaneously eating Asuka's, Nagisa's headless corpse in Unit-01's outstretched hand while he piloted Unit-13 with Shinji, Rei engaging Sachiel in Unit-00/-01, that Kirishima girl fighting Angels in a blockier version of her mecha, Gendo smiling at Rei, Gendo forcing himself onto her, Gendo infecting her with Adam, Asuka/Rei/Shinji seething with jealousy as the other two kissed, Shinji/Asuka holding Rei tight, Shinji/Asuka holding Rei down with lust in their eyes, Shinji/Asuka telling Rei how much they loved her, Shinji/Asuka smiling at Rei.  
  
Confusion. Happiness. Rage. Love. Hate. Warmth.  
  
_Loneliness_.  
  
It was then that, without the presence of the other two pilots, Rei realized that she was at once impossibly lonely and wanted to shut out the world until they arrived. She was trying to run away to a place she hated because at least there she would be safe until the others came to protect her. No one would hurt her while Shinji and Asuka were there. No one could hurt her because of the importance they had on her life. They gave her meaning. She would die for them. Even now she was planning on dying for them. She stared at her hands in Misato's, and she squinted.  
  
Rei felt tears form at the edge of her vision, and she grabbed Misato's hands like a life preserver.  
  
"I... haa..." Rei took a choking breath. Her bottom lip quivered. Misato couldn't understand. No one could. Living this long, repeating everything over again, with the same results every time. She couldn't do this alone. She needed Shinji and Asuka. "I'm alone," she choked out. "I'm alone and... and I HATE it."  
  
Misato hid her shock well. She rubbed her thumbs against Rei's hands slowly. "It's okay," she whispered to the girl. "Let it out, Rei. I'm here for you."  
  
Rei could trust Misato. She always had. The stoic mask broke into tiny little pieces.  
  
Rei lost control.

 

* * *

 

 

Rei lay down on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. Taking a deep breath, she focused her eyes on a spot only she saw, letting Misato's final words of the night bounce around in her head.  
  
_"If you need me,"_ she had told Rei _. "I'll be in the room down the hall on the left. You're not going home tonight. Leave your clothes outside of your door and I'll wash them for you."_  
  
She gave Rei the privacy she felt necessary and left the First Child to take a long shower, then set up a room for her. The room that would eventually become Shinji's, and she was using the same bedsheets that would also become his in the future. Misato was still awake and doing paperwork. Since Rei had showed up, she had not so much as touched a single can of beer. It was odd, seeing Misato sober and focused, and that focus being on Rei's personal safety- no, on Rei's needs.  
  
After she had recovered enough to not be a crying wreck, Rei was informed that she was more than welcome to stay the night. Rei had accepted the offer, despite herself, and now she seemed stuck here. She couldn't very well go home naked after all. Not that she would care, but people would probably get extremely upset.  
  
No, that was a lie. Rei  _did_  care. A little bit, anyway. She was finding more and more that she had grown enough self-worth to care about herself. Even with the harsh turn this Cycle had taken so far, she still maintained a sort of integrity that refused to be put down. The fact that this Cycle had given her some incredible amounts of anger seemed to help matters, and she considered if it was that anger that was keeping her from falling apart entirely.  
  
Well, that and knowing in the future she would see the others. It just felt so far away.  
  
Rei sighed and rolled over in bed, laying on her side. There was still so much more to do. She needed to revise the Plan; new problems needed to be taken into consideration, and she needed to get a handle on her own mental state. Rei was... emotionally fragile. That was the best way to put it. Academically, looking from the outside in, she could understand why, but from the inside, she was disappointed with herself. Despite what had happened to her, Rei felt like she still should have a handle on herself. She had seen and heard much worse things happening to the others - so why was it so hard for her to come to grips with...  
  
  
Just the thought of the word was enough to turn her stomach. It made her sick. The shower helped, briefly, but the faint smell of LCL that seemed to stick to her no matter how hard she washed brought it back. It consumed her, ripped her mind back to that moment, like a dark-hearted beacon that reminded her what had happened. Even now, she could still feel it, feel his hands all over her, feel the lifeless eyes of her clones staring at her with soulless glee. She could still hear him calling her Yui. Rei tried to shake the thoughts, but it just wouldn't let go of her. She unconsciously covered herself with the second bed sheet that she at first tossed aside. She never felt so exposed before.  
  
Taking another calming breath, Rei closed her eyes and frowned. These intrusive thoughts were getting in her way. She needed to think about The Plan, not think about what Commander Ikari had done to her. In her mind, all of the memories continued to assert themselves as a jumbled up mess, and even concentrating it would take more time than she actually had on hand. She had almost gone through what she called a Memory Crash, something that happened only once before, but Rei supposed she needed to find a way to deal with that, too, in case it ever happened again. The last time it took her out of commission for nearly an entire Cycle; this time she didn't know if she would ever recover from such a thing.  
  
She needed to sleep. It was not easily forthcoming, and even with fatigue creeping on the edges of her psyche, Rei couldn't just turn her brain off. She kept demanding to think about happier times, but her mind kept recalling the event from earlier today. She just couldn't move past it. It was eating at her at a time when it was the last thing she needed to think about. It didn't help that she knew this not only wasn't the first time, it probably wouldn't be the last, either. The worst was she didn't know what to do about it. Rei gripped the bed sheets and opened her eyes again, glaring at the ceiling. She understood the anger as she contemplated; it was the feeling of being trapped and unable to truly fight back. Even if she raised her AT Field, there was nothing that said he wouldn't be replaced by an even worse lunatic, and if he somehow survived, he could just excise the memory from her when he replaced her with another clone.  
  
"I might not even be the second one, anymore," she considered. "What if I fought back before and he replaced me?" She shuddered with anger, but refused to let it overcome her this time. "I will have to deal with this, sooner or later."  
  
A thought dawned on her. "...What if I told Unit-01?"  
  
It was honestly the longest shot she could have come up with. There was a better than zero chance Yui wouldn't even be aware at this point. But if she was, then she could speak to Rei. Had she attempted this before? She couldn't remember. But she was more than willing to find out. The worst case scenario would be that Yui would go berserk, but she knew that Shinji's mother, even at her worst, wasn't like that. Conniving and manipulative, yes, she had been that before, but even when attempting to end the world, she was doing it to create a new life for her son. Most times, anyway.  
  
It was a risk, but at this point she was so desperate for someone, ANYONE to listen to her, that she would take it. Past Cycles had caused her to hate the person known as Yui Ayanami, but Yui  _Ikari_  was at least not cruel.  
  
_Yes... yes!_  Even if she could just open her feelings to Yui, she would understand. On a primal level, all souls understood each other in that regard, no matter what. Rei felt the anger release her, and she started to look forward to syncing up with Evangelion Unit-01.  
  
Rei smiled. She had regained control.

* * *

 

 

 

 

**Prologue  
Follow Her Heart**

 

 

* * *

 

Rei awoke suddenly, sitting up in bed. She looked around, confused.  _Where am I? What's going on? ...oh, I'm at Captain Katsuragi's apartment_. She looked toward the door as it slowly slid open. Misato must have been knocking, she decided, as the Captain stood at the edge of the door, already dressed for work, with Rei's uniform hanging off of a shoulder. She looked clear and focused - a long cry from the expression she would have when everything started to go sour. "Good, you heard me," she nodded. "Alright, you have a long day, today, so I went ahead and got ready," she leaned against the door frame. "Once you're done with school today, Rits wants you down in her office for a routine check-up. She says it'll only take a couple of hours. After that, you'll be doing synch practice with the simulation bodies for a few hours using the new weapons system. I'll be with you during that part; it'll be the first time we work together," Misato paused for a second. "I, uh... I moved the timetable around a bit. Last night, after you went to sleep. I told Rits you needed to work out some stress."

"..." Rei was too tired to speak, so she just nodded.

"We were going to wait another couple of weeks," Misato continued. "Before we put you in a simulation body, but yeah... just, I think it'll be good for you. Even if it isn't a real Eva, it's close, right?"

Rei nodded again. She was never really much of a morning person, but she just never used to care; it was only in recent Cycles she had learned the joys of sleeping in. Mornings were now groggy, half-remembered events that just kind of mushed themselves together haphazardly. Misato walked into the room and set Rei's clothes down on the bed, patting the girl on the head and leaving the room. "Breakfast is on the table," she called back. "We'll do your hair after."

Rei stared at her uniform; it was still warm. Misato must have used the dryer for them. Rei got out of bed and began to dress, noting that a few of the frayed edges - she only had the one uniform - had been repaired by someone who didn't really know how to sew clothing together. There was also some changes: a pair of Misato's black bicycle shorts and knee-high socks as opposed to what she normally wore, along with different undergarments. Rei's shoes had also been scrubbed of any dirt on them. Odd; Misato didn't really seem like the type. Still, the small gesture at trying to be a good person gave Rei a soft smile as she buttoned up her shirt. She wondered if she had done the same for Shinji and Asuka when they weren't looking, but realized that after he moved in, Shinji probably handled most of this kind of work.

The shorts ended about halfway from the bottom of the skirt; Misato had obviously chosen them so they wouldn't meet the socks. It was odd but Rei wasn't really the type to care about fashion, so Misato probably had a reason for it. Probably 'cuteness' or whatever it was that got in the Captain's head. It was mostly fine, although they were a bit large in the waist due to the differences between the two physically. Rei left the room, carrying her shoes in one hand, as she walked into the main room of the apartment. Sitting down in front of a microwaved meal, Rei looked around and noticed that Misato had at least made the effort to get a grip on her apartment.

"Odd," was all Rei said. She looked down at her food. Shinji had warned her that Misato could "burn water", so she wasn't entirely sure how to go about this. Well, it's not like Rei cared much for taste anyway so-

This was objectively poisonous, surely. Rei set the chopsticks down and quietly pushed the food away. Misato appeared from her room and sat across from the First Child. "Yeah, I know," she sighed, staring at the girl. "I can't cook; thank you for noticing."

"I... I appreciate the effort, Captain," Rei choked out; she felt like she needed to scratch her tongue against sandpaper to get the taste out. "I will acquire a meal at school today," she looked around again. "Your home has changed."

"Yeah, I cleaned up a bit. I, uh..." Misato chuckled. "I was actually a bit embarrassed for you to see the place as it was. Anyway, Rits said Section 2 dropped your satchel off at school, and your meds are in the small side pocket. Speaking of," she grinned. "You like your new fashion accessories?"

"I..." she paused. "I do not understand fashion, Captain."

"Somehow I'm not surprised," chuckled the older woman. "Well, the short story is that most of your clothes were actually garbage, so I tossed them and decided while I was at it you could have some of my old clothes!" She looked very pleased with herself. "Unfortunately, I don't have any regular socks lying around in your size, and the ones you got used to be a lot bigger - I had to cut some of the fabric to get it down to your size."

"Yes, ma'am," Rei nodded. That made sense at least. "And... the shorts?"

"Safety purposes, duh," Misato stuck out her tongue. "Now stay here, I'm going to get some things," the Captain stood and sauntered off, and Rei stared off into the bathroom. It was far too early for Misato - or anyone else, really - to be this excited about anything. Rei really wanted to go back to bed, really. It had to be safer than whatever Misato was going to pull. Unfortunately, Rei really couldn't outrun Misato. She was fast, but Misato was a trained soldier. She could run all day.

_Ah, well._

Misato returned with some cosmetic tools and a cup of water, and began to work on Rei's hair. "Do you even know what a comb is?" Misato asked absently, and Rei decided that this was a good moment to turn her brain off. She didn't even know one could generate such pain with such simple tools, and  _what IS THAT_ , and  _ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow_.

"Please stop," Rei finally said. "This is extremely unpleasant."

"Almost done, Rei," Misato chirped, taking an entirely different brush and assaulting the girl's unfortunate scalp with it. "Remember what they say, 'beauty is pain' and all that," If beauty was pain then Rei didn't want any part of it and  _WHAT ARE YOU DOING_  and _I want to go back to sleep now thank you very much_ and- "See, all done," Misato held out a mirror to Rei's face, and she tilted her head.

"I do not understand," she said. "It looks almost identical."

"Yes, it does, BUT-" Misato stood triumphantly. "Your now don't look like you have perpetual bedhead. This is a drastic improvement, Rei - hell, I'd even say you look pretty damn good, in my not so humble opinion."

Rei chewed on some words. "Thank you?" she half-asked.

"Your welcome, Rei, now go get in the car. I'm taking your happy ass to school."

"Captain, I do not see how-"

"Just get in the damn car, Rei."

"Yes, ma'am."

 

* * *

 

 At this point in time, Rei was effectively a no one. This was an important distinction - it was generally assumed that, like the majority of the students that went to Tokyo-3 First Municipal Junior High School, she had parents that worked for NERV. Evangelions were something of an open secret - everyone knew about them but no one really talked about them since they had never actually been seen by any of the students yet, so what they were made for was also something of a mystery. However, some things never change, and as Rei picked up her satchel from the main office, a certain bespectacled boy was hanging out next to it.  
  
Let it be known that Kensuke Aida tried to befriend Rei in nearly every Cycle. The two were classmates, and in a time before Shinji, there was only one Evangelion pilot in the school, and the self-professed "turbo-nerd" was pretty certain it was a blue-haired albino who kept to herself and barely kept up with her schoolwork; after all, how many students were seen regularly going to and from NERV HQ? In any event, he did seem to care at least a little bit about her privacy, and all of his inane questions were more about NERV than they were about her.  
  
"So dad says you stormed out of HQ last night," he was saying, folding his arms behind his back as they walked to class. "Wanna talk about it?"  
  
"Not particularly," Rei replied. "...I had a bad day."  
  
"Fair enough," he said, not pressing the issue. "Anyway, just a heads up, the girls are planning on ambushing you during lunch today. They want revenge after what you pulled last week, I guess."  
  
"Last week?" Rei echoed. She had no recollection of what the boy was talking about, not finding the time to really dive into the memories this Cycle had imposed upon her. "...I was busy last week. I do not recall."  
  
"You beat the crap out of that one girl, Izuka," Kensuke told her, not seeming to notice or care that he was telling her something she should probably know. "This was after she smacked you for being a 'stuck-up bitch' or something. I dunno, man, girls are weird."  
  
"..." she slightly inclined her head to look at the boy. "And yet... here you are?"  
  
"Hey, what can I say?" he sighed. "You always look like you need friends, Ayanami," the two stopped walking outside of class 1-B. "By the way, isn't your birthday tomorrow?"  
  
"...yes?"  
"Cool, I'll hang out with you if you want," he shrugged. "No one should be alone on their birthday. Besides, it's the last day of school, too, and we'll be moving up to 8th. So that's cause for at least some celebration, right? I'll drag Touji along, too. Anyway, see ya Ayanami. By the way," he grinned. "You look great today," he walked into class ahead of her, and Rei watched him go. Although this conversation wasn't abnormal - it fell within the realm of possibility for the boy - she had never really noticed before that he had gone out of his way to make friends with her. Once Shinji got there, she had been mostly ignored by him in favor of the much friendlier Third Child. Maybe this time around, she could befriend him, if only to deal with her crippling loneliness for now.  
  
Rei stepped into the classroom. 1-B was a bit different from 2-A, although it mostly came down to being a mirror image of the class she was more used to. She took her seat next to the window and opened her satchel, pulling out the laptop and notebook, and set it on the desk. Now would be a great time to review The Plan and make some adjustments, so she supposed she could do that. She grabbed a pen from the satchel, set that on the floor, and began to make edits.  
  
Dealing with the Commander went from being something that could be put off to first priority - she needed to deal with this before Shinji showed up. Of course, the two pilots remained the Keystone, but she couldn't really do anything about it until they arrived. Figuring out why she was designated at Unit-01's pilot instead of Unit-00's was also something she needed to do, as it left open what Shinji's purpose would be when he showed up. What if he didn't? If Rei was not only Unit-01's pilot but also a successful one, Gendo might not summon his son to Tokyo-3. No, that was impossible; he was too necessary for Gendo's Scenario.  
  
But what if Gendo had a different one? That was possible, but his vision of Third Impact was concrete enough that it had never changed - only the methodology had, and those were minor adjustments. Well, not the one where he deigned to engineer Fourth Impact, but the less said about that the better. In any event, changes were needed to be implemented. She continued to write, turning over what she could and trying to recall memories unique to this Cycle, but those particular things weren't being forthcoming. She must still be tired.  
  
"Hey, Ayanami," a voice in front of her said. Rei looked up; Hikari Horaki was sitting in front of her.  _Oh, right, she isn't the Representative of this class; that would be in 2-A. Here she was just a normal student_. "Busy?"  
  
"...a little," Rei replied. She shut the notebook. "It can wait. Thinking is too hard this early anyway."  
  
Hikari giggled. "Cracking jokes now? That's unlike you," replied the pigtailed girl. "Tomorrow's the last day of school. You got any plans for the break?"  
  
"I do not," Rei answered. "I... will probably have work, however."  
  
"Right, you're at NERV a lot," Hikari nodded; like Kensuke, she knew that Rei was in the Geofront a lot, but didn't push it like the boy did. "Say, if you ever have a free day, would you like to hang out? Sorry, I know I keep asking you this, but you're the only other girl in this class, you know?"  
  
"..." Rei considered her options. Probably couldn't hurt. "That is... acceptable, Horaki. I may not have any spare time, however."  
  
"I get it," the other girl nodded. "Dad says whatever you're working on is super important, so I guess you wouldn't have any time. But, uh... I think it'd be cool, you know?"  
  
"I suppose," Rei replied, not really understanding. She looked out the window. "...thank you for the offer, Horaki."  
  
The 1-B class rep stood as the teacher entered. Class was officially in session.  


 

* * *

 

The passneger door to the Alpine opened and shut. Misato pretended to not notice as she sat in the driver's seat, twirling her sunglasses around her finger. "Well?"  
  
Ritsuko took off her own glasses. "The results from the blood on the underwear came back, Misato. You were right."  
  
Misato grabbed the sunglasses and squeezed, the cheap plastic bending under her fingers. "God  _damnit_ ," she grumbled. "Can you tell who it was?"  
  
"DNA results came back empty," Ritsuko replied. "Whoever it is, they aren't in any databases, so it's likely that... Rei has been his only target."  
  
"Fuck," Misato growled. "Did you contact the Commander? Section 2? Anyone?"  
  
"Of course I did, I'm not stupid," Ritsuko said coldly. "The Commander is pissed off, of course. We all are," the doctor leaned her head onto the passenger side window. "Section 2 is scrambling but they've got zero so far. Heads are gonna roll."  
  
"Any leading theories?" Misato pressed.  
"Well... my first guess is a staff member," the blonde ventured. "She's there the most out of everywhere, and she's often alone," she rapped her head against the window. "It's not fair," she whispered. "We put her through so much and then it turns out this had been happening to her."  
  
"When do you think...?"  
"When I lost sight of her, just before she reached the surface, if I was to guess. There's a fifteen minute gap between leaving my sight and Section 2 picking up her signal."  
  
Misato shattered the sunglasses. "Fuck!" she dropped them to the floorboard; fortunately for her, she had gloves on that prevented her from getting too badly hurt by the shattering glass. "God damnit. Why her, Rits? Rei is an innocent girl. She doesn't deserve this!"  
  
"I know!" Ritsuko cried. "I know... damnit Misato, she been so upset lately. She never wants to talk about it to me or anyone else."  
  
"She didn't trust us," Misato suggested. "Are you surprised? Would you?"  
"No, I guess I wouldn't," Ritsuko sighed. She pulled a brown envelope out of her coat pocket and tossed it in Misato's lap. "I figured you would want to read it for yourself. I gotta go back to work."  
  
"Wait!" Misato grabbed Ritsuko's hand. "What about Rei? What can we do for her?"  
"Until I rip apart Central Dogma finding out who did this?" Ritsuko shook her head. "Support her. She's emotionally fragile right now, Misato. She needs care and love, which are... well..."  
  
"Two things we don't have time to give her," sighed the Captain. Misato punched her steering wheel. "Fuck this. I'll make time for it. No one should suffer alone. We'll find out who did this to her," she let go of Ritsuko's hand.  
  
"I'm using the MAGI to analyze camera footage," the doctor said as she opened the car door. "They're going to ping back anything suspicious. In the meantime... don't tell her we know. I don't think she fully understands what's being done to her. She's... she's just a kid, Misato."  
  
"Yeah... just a kid..." Misato looked ahead. "How much is she going to have to suffer?"  
  
"The Angels are coming. Her life is going to... get much worse."  
"Fucking hell."  
  
Ritsuko got out of the car. Misato sped off. The blonde doctor watched her go, finally putting her hand over her eyes when Misato turned a corner and vanished.  
  
She had lied. The DNA results had come back with a result. Everything made sense now. Everything made horrible sense. Rei was being tortured under her "care". No wonder she hated the doctor so much. Composing herself, Ritsuko began walking back to the train station that had brought her to the surface.  
  
The insistence the two were to be alone.  
The callous disregard for full physicals, and the subsequent orders to only perform the most basic of checks.  
Her quiet demeanor, suicidal tendencies and idolization, and nearly emotionless expression.  
The way her life was controlled so harshly, even now.  
... The fact that Rei Ayanami was a spitting image of Yui Ikari.   
  
This had been going on for three years. How could no one see it? She looked  _just like_  a young Yui Ikari. Of  _course_  she would be used as a stand-in for Yui.  
  
And Ritsuko was just as guilty as he was. She had let her own feelings about Rei get in the way of doing her job. Even now she fixed the reports to where no one would know who the guilty party was.  
  
" _The Commander called me Yui._ "  
  
Dear God in Heaven, she had all but told Ritsuko what was going on, basically screamed it at her with those words, the way she had looked so confused and  _hurt_  when she said it, and Ritsuko had  _ignored her_.  
  
Ritsuko felt sick. "Oh, Rei," she said quietly. "How could you ever forgive me?"  


 

* * *

 

Rei actually hated the food from the school, but it was infinitely better than whatever THAT was that Misato had "cooked". She sat alone on the roof, staring off down the hill. Somewhere off to the side she could hear Aida and Suzuhara laughing about something. She considered going over to them, but decided that would be too out-of-character for her and would probably make them uncomfortable, so she stayed where she was, eating her sandwich in silence and watching how people moved about this part of the city, living lives much less exciting - but probably much more happy - than she had to this point. It almost made her sad.  
  
Someone grabbed her collar and hoisted her up so fast she barely had time to register it. "Alone again," a rough voice said. "Damn, Ayanami, it's like you want me to beat the shit out of you," she was quickly pushed against the roof's security fence. "After what you did to my girlfriend, I'm going to have to take revenge."  
  
"Yeah, get 'er Ishida!" a much more feminine voice shouted. Rei turned around, and found herself surrounded by four girls her age and an upperclassman, and she slipped on her mask as she considered what she was seeing. The boy, Ishida, she had no memory of, but the girls were part of a clique that were the would-be bullies of the school, until Asuka put them in their place when she showed up - at some point, the Second Child would get into a fight with all four of them and win.  
  
Rei wondered what she had done to offend any of these people. Normally they ignored her, finding targets much more prone to emotional outburst - but maybe that was it. Rei had already established that in this Cycle she harbored a lot of anger - just her profile picture from the psych report showed that. She may have 'gone off', as Shinji had put it, on one of them for some perceived slight against her character. Rei gripped the fence as she looked between the five of them. Far behind them, Aida and Suzuhara - which Rei quickly noted were the only other people on the roof and must have shown up because Aida had known this was going to happen - were already on their feet, lunches forgotten, as they moved toward the gathering.  
  
"OI!" Suzuhara was shouting. "What the hell you think yer doin, Ishida! You can't hit girls, that's wrong!"  
  
"Shut him up," the ninth grader growled at one of the girls. He raised his fist at Rei and swung. Rei, recalling by now an infinite amount of pilot training, tilted her head to avoid the punch. The boy growled and grabbed her again by the collar, and Rei found herself lifted into the air and tossed like she weighed nothing. Rei bounced along the roof a good few meters before coming to a stop at a corner. The girl stood, teeth grit in pain, as the boy moved towards her. Behind them, Aida, who had much less qualms about hitting an aggressive girl, pushed one of them as he made way for Suzuhara.  
  
Ishida kicked Rei; the force was hard enough that she lost her breath. "You ain't fighting back this time?" he asked. "Funny; last time you and I got into it you almost won. Too bad; I was looking forward to this one."  
  
Rei felt her anger rising. Whatever she had done, it wasn't worth this, surely. She could raise her AT Field and turn him into a bloody mess, but she had decided against it before (apparently; she was still confused to all of this), and would do so again. She balled her hand into a fist and swung, but Rei had no idea how to actually fight, and her ineffectual punch only caused the much stronger boy to laugh. "Forgot how to fight, Ayanami? Too bad."  
  
He raised his fist again.  
  
Suzuhara was suddenly there and tackled Ishida, sending both of them sprawling. Aida grabbed Rei by the wrist and pulled. "Come on, let's go!" he shouted, and Rei complied, breaking into a run back towards the door that led to the roof. To her side, Suzuhara and Ishida exchanged blows, and the girls that had accompanied the larger boy were cheering the fight on.  
  
"Shouldn't we help?" Rei asked as Aida pulled her into the stairwell.  
  
"Naw, Touji's got it," Aida replied. "He's a fighter and, unlike Ishida, actually takes athleticism seriously. You don't become the rising star of the basketball team because you're puny. Come on, I'll take you to the nurse's office."  
  
Aida led Rei down the stairs to the first floor, forgetting that he was supposed to be something of a shy nerd, and to the nurse's office. He never let go of her, and ignored the looks other students were giving them. Rei did as well, still mostly confused about what had just transpired. According to Ishida, she had almost won a previous engagement against him, which meant that Rei was supposed to be something of a fighter herself. Rei, as far as she knew, had rarely gotten into a fight outside of her Evangelion - in Cycles past her and Asuka had some fights, but Asuka almost always won those.  
  
"Aida," she began. "Ishida said that I was capable of fighting him. I do not believe I am."  
  
"You don't remember?" the boy asked. He walked her into the nurse's office. "It was the talk of the school for a while, Ayanami."  
  
"I do not," Rei replied as she took a seat on one of the many bed's in the office. The nurse was nowhere to be found, presumably on her own lunch break.  
  
Kensuke unstrapped his ever-present camcorder and reached into his satchel, pulling out a memory card that had "BEST FIGHT EVER" scrawled on its plastic case, and inserted it. Opening the viewscreen, he selected a file and handed the camera to Rei. "Look here, I filmed this right before it began."  
  
Rei took the camera and watched. Her eyes widened with surprise; the Rei Ayanami in the video was not her. Also taking place on the roof, THIS Rei was clearly furious that her meal had been interrupted, but again her facial expressions were subtle enough that you had to know her to see it. Her back was to the fence as she spoke to the upperclassman, and Rei found herself slightly bemused as the one in the video had some... rather choice curses to throw at him.  
  
_Wait... **German**  curses_?  
  
The Rei in the video launched herself at the boy, and the two got into a fight that would have looked rather impressive if it weren't for the fact that Rei was a tiny girl of 142cm and Ishida a massive boy of 163cm. But she was fierce, and he was slow, and she was knocking him around a good bit before he finally gained the upper hand. Rei winced slightly as he picked her up by the neck and launched a series of blows with his open hand, culminating at trying to throw her through the fence. Rei in the video stood and shouted something extremely Asuka-like and went after him again.  
  
"I have no memory of this," she whispered. The Rei Ayanami in the video was bloodied and bruised, but she didn't give in and attacked Ishida again and again, each time doing worse but also with each time coming more furious until it was obvious to even an average person who didn't know her very well could tell. She had hurt the boy but good, but in the end he hit her so hard Rei almost felt a phantom pain in her stomach, and she passed out. The rest of the video involved Horaki and Aida trying to help her to the very nurse's office where she was now.  
  
In the meantime, Aida had found a few band-aids. Rei had a scrape mark on her arm from where she slid across the roof but was mostly unhurt otherwise, and the boy had taken it upon himself to take care of her. The video ended and she closed the viewscreen, looking at the boy. Aida had, surprisingly, kept his calm, although his face was a bit red. Curious, but it was fine. "You did not have to..." she said to him, and Aida just shook his head.  
  
"It would be against my honor as a male of the species if I didn't help a girl such as yourself," he told her.  
  
"This embarrasses you," Rei stated, and Aida shook his head again. He put another band-aid on her arm.  
  
"I'm not embarrassed," he replied. "I'm a bit nervous, sure, but that's cause you're really damn pretty. I think most guys would kill to be in my position, Ayanami," he paused. "That's a metaphor."  
  
"I see," Rei nodded, not really seeing it at all. That sounded like an awful metaphor. "...thank you, Aida."  
  
"Eh, call me Ken, everyone else does," said the boy. "So you really don't remember?"  
  
"I do not."  
"That's odd," he sat down next to her as she handed his camera back. "I guess your job is more important. What else do you not remember?"  
  
"A... a lot of things," she finally said. I don't think he would understand. He could also think I'm insane.  
  
"You know, there was a bit of a joke that you had died and gotten replaced by an angrier version of yourself," he said. "Right after summer break, you were always angry or at least gave off the impression of it. People also thought you were a bit nuts - Horaki said what you were doing might've been causing you to crack under pressure or something."  
  
"I see," Rei looked at the door.  
  
"Everyone in class was a bit concerned, ya know? You've always been the quiet type, but here you were, speaking a lot of German and calling everyone an idiot and how all this had happened before and you were gonna change it this time."  
  
"...repeat that last part?" Rei turned to look at Ken so fast he jerked away from her a bit.  
  
"...wow, you really don't remember," he finally sighed. "Okay, this is fine. You said this could happen."  
  
"I said...?"  
  
"Yeah, here," he reached into his satchel and pulled out a notebook almost identical to the one she had. "I didn't know why at the time, but about a week ago you came to me and said some things. Some... pretty bad things. You said it was possible you were about to be replaced, whatever that meant. You said I would be friends with someone very important to you in the future, so you could trust me, and..." he blushed a bit. "You have to understand, Ayanami, you dragged me into a supply closet to tell me all of this, and I thought you were about to do something crazy different."  
  
"What did I tell you?" Rei pressed. Kensuke grew sullen, and he looked around briefly.  
  
"Ayanami, is your boss doing anything... unpleasant, to you?" He looked away, and Rei could see that he was almost ashamed to be asking her this question. "Y-you told me he was... forcing himself... you know what I mean?"  
  
So this was it, then. Someone outside NERV did know. "He... he is," she finally said, and she had to look away. "I told you?"  
  
"You did," he said quietly. "You told me he hadn't done that before, not in the past... 'Cycles', I think you called it. You were convinced that all of this had happened before. You also said everyone would think you were nuts, cause you'd tried telling everyone before and that's what happened. I didn't really get it, but when you came in this morning... you were different. You weren't as angry. You... actually looked pretty sad. Horaki noticed it, too, so we decided to see if you'd wanna be friends or something."  
  
Rei was quiet as he continued. "I didn't know what to make of it, you know? Sure, you were mad, but you were also, like... really lively. Compared to how quiet you were when we all met last year. Which, you were still quiet, but you had something of an edge to you. We talked a lot, you talked to Horaki a bit, and... I dunno. I thought we had some sort of friendship blooming. Maybe something more. You shut that down, don't worry. You told me some others I'd meet soon already had your heart. I don't know why you thought I'd believe you, until you handed me this," he reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. "This... is the story of my life. Written by you, told by me, according to you."  
  
Rei bit the inside of her lip. "So you told me you were probably going to be replaced soon. You said you couldn't explain without confusing and terrifying me, so I let it go. You just said that you might be... different, soon. You said you would become 'the third' way too soon. Do you know what that means, Ayanami?"  
  
"I do," Rei lowered her eyes, staring at the floor. She HAD already been replaced. That would be why she had no memory of the past six months; Commander Ikari would have ensured that he excised that information out of her mind. But this meant, given Doctor Akagi's report, that she wasn't involved this time. As far as Akagi was concerned she was still Rei 'II', not 'III'. "Thank you... Ken... this was most enlightening."  
  
She stood up, and the boy stood next to her. He was blushing again. "I'm sorry all this is happening to you," he said. "I can't help you more than I am now. I wish I could."  
  
"You already have," she told him. "More than you could really know."  
  
Rei suddenly turned pink as the boy mustered his courage and put his arms around her waist. It was brief but he at least was making an effort. "You trusted me," he said to her as he let go. "You knew that I would make the right choice. If you're right, and this has all happened before, then I'll help you however I can. Even if you just need a shoulder to cry on. You said the people you're waiting on are still months from coming. I can be your friend until then."  
  
"Not until then," Rei said. She looked at him and smiled. "You can always be someone I can call friend, Ken."  
  
The boy blushed again and laughed nervously. "That means a lot, coming from you, Ayanami."  
  
"...Rei," she said. Ken's grin was accompanied by another nervous laugh.  
  
"Lunch is almost over," he said. "Wanna head back to class, Rei?"  
  
She nodded. Together, the two walked out of the nurse's office.  


* * *

  
  
_If you're reading this, then I have been replaced. You are the third, and here is what you need to know. Destroy this document after you write down all the relevant parts._  
  
Well, that was certainly a way to grab her attention. She had ignored the pointed looks everyone had given her and Kensuke when they walked into class together and promptly opened up the notebook he had given her.  
  
_We came back far earlier than we had before. We were still the first when I awoke from Third Impact. We were too young to enact The Plan, but we made some early choices that may still yet have far reaching implications. For now, understand why I gave this to Aida: he is trustworthy and he will make the right choice.  
  
Also I kind of like him, but you probably won't._  
  
"Hey Ayanami, what'cha reading?" Rei looked up at Horaki.  
  
"Just... just an old notebook," she replied. She shut the notebook.  
  
"Can you hang out later today?" Horaki asked. Rei shook her head. "Oh..."  
  
"I have work today... unfortunately," she added. She really wanted to read this notebook. "I... thank you for the offer, however. Why do you ask?"  
  
"I heard about the roof. Suzuhara, that idiot, is bragging about beating up an older student, but... he clearly did it to protect you," she blushed slightly. "It's pretty admirable, isn't it?"  
  
"...it is," Rei nodded. "I will have to thank him later. Or..." she considered her words. "Can you thank him for me? I will have to leave immediately after school today, I will not have a chance."  
  
A part of Rei immensely enjoyed watching Horaki blush a vibrant red. "Oh, I couldn't! I couldn't talk to Suzuhara just like that!"  
  
"I think it would be good for... the both of you," Rei said.  
  
Horaki turned around, her face a bright red. Rei managed the smallest of grins as the teacher walked into the classroom, and she looked out the window.  
  
 

* * *

 

"So do you feel better today?"  
  
"Better?"  
  
"After your tantrum yesterday, I mean."  
  
Rei flinched. Slightly. "I did not have a... a 'tantrum', Doctor. I was merely... indisposed, emotionally."  
  
"That's why I called it a tantrum."  
  
The room they used for Rei's medical check was dark and cold; it always was. Rei looked around as Ritsuko checked her for any 'abnormalities'; since she wasn't entirely human, her unique physiology required a computer that was linked to the MAGI, which could process the unusual data that most civilian computers would consider absolute gibberish.  
  
For example, Angels were highly efficient creatures, had to be out of necessity due to their massive size, which was only amplified in Rei since she was human-sized. Monthly injections and medication of nanomachines were necessary to essentially 'kill' some of Rei's cellular structure, as well as various hormones and chemicals in her body, to keep her Angelic nature in check. Coupled with fusing human DNA to her cellular makeup, it was the only way to ensure that Rei could at least pass for human; however, it also more or less necessitated that Ritsuko could be the only licensed physician to do anything for her; not even NERV's medical staff on hand were allowed so much as an EKG without her explicit permission.  
  
Without these necessary nanomachines, Rei would have many of the capabilities other Angels showed. In her case, it mostly amounted to rapid regeneration when injured and having orange blood. The blue hair, red eyes, and pale skin were a result of her human/Angel splicing. She could project an AT Field regardless of whatever she was on, but mental conditioning she had received as a child was supposed to help with that. Rei had broken that conditioning a long time ago, but for the purposes of maintaining 'cover', she pretended like she was still a puppet of Gendo and Ritsuko's making - hence the 'mask', the appearance of having no emotion at all.  
  
She didn't respond as Ritsuko shoved various gadgets onto her person. Rei flinched as Ritsuko more or less pushed her on her back and stabbed her with another needle, this one in her hip, but it came and went so fast that the doctor probably didn't notice. "This one is different," she was saying. "It's... well, you don't need to know. I also need to adjust the concentration of nanos that target your skin; you're way too cold to pass as human right now."  
  
"I understand," Rei replied, and the doctor took out a different syringe and pressed it into Rei's neck. "Although no one approaches me enough for that to be an issue, Doctor Akagi."  
  
"Well, maybe not for too much longer," Ritsuko said, trashing both syringes in the bio-hazard bin. "There's been some complications with Unit-00, so we're putting through a request to NERV-Berlin," The EKG spiked when Rei's heartbeat skipped briefly, but Ritsuko paid it no mind - it was well within parameters. She didn't seem to notice the look of pure  _joy_  that danced across Rei's face.  
  
"A request?" She echoed. Ritsuko started writing something down on her clipboard.  
  
"Yes," she confirmed. "Until, or should I say if, we figure out what happened with Unit-00, we're going to need another pilot. We'll be summoning the Second Child to Tokyo-3 for now, along with her Evangelion. In the meantime, we'll be sending Unit-00 to them and see if their technicians can figure it out."  
  
Rei frowned, but only slightly; without Unit-00 here, it could delay Shinji being requested to Tokyo-3, and for obvious reasons she really needed the Third Child's presence. "Doctor, we both know the secrets of the Evangelions. Would it not be more... prudent... for Unit-00 to remain here?"  
  
"Obviously," Ritsuko snorted. "But this one is politics. Berlin will feel vulnerable without an Eva there, even if it's a barely functional one. I figure they'll send it back when the Angels start making beelines for the Geofront. At that point we'll call in the Third Child."  
  
"Commander Ikari's son," Rei stated.  
  
"Yep," Ritsuko nodded. "I can't say I'm thrilled with the idea of two Ikaris running around NERV, but he's supposed to be a lot different from his father. At least that's what his handlers tell us."  
  
"He would be a better pilot for Unit-01," Rei sat up on the edge of the table.  
  
"Yeah, but desperate times, Rei," Ritsuko set her clipboard down as she sat in a chair across from Rei; a stack of readouts continued to print to a tray on the doctor's desk.. "Shinji Ikari will end up in Tokyo-3, no doubt. But it's all pointless if we're dead before he shows up," the doctor swallowed her mild discomfort around Rei and managed a smile. "You looking forward to meeting him?"  
  
"I... yes," Rei nodded. "For... personal reasons, Doctor Akagi."  
  
"Well, I can't pretend to know what goes on in your head," Ritsuko said. "You might be part Angel, and it's easy to forget that you're also part teenage girl. I guess you would want someone of the opposite sex who you could share your struggles with."  
  
"Not all of them," it was Rei's turn to sigh. Quietly, of course. "The Second and Third Children would not understand some things about me."  
  
"Rei, I'm your doctor and I barely understand some things about you," Ritsuko said. "By all rights you shouldn't exist. Human and Angel DNA are supposed to be incompatible. I'll never know how Gendo and Yui managed to create you."  
  
"...I thought Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki had a hand in my creation," Rei replied.  
  
"Only in the actual process," Ritsuko told her. "Fuyutsuki only sort of helped create you. The actual theory was done by Gendo and Yui,  _specifically_  Yui Ikari as an extension of the Evangelion creation process. I'm not even sure about the specifics myself," she took a sip of her coffee and made a face. "I guess you could ask the Commander about it, if you really wanted to know, but... I don't recommend that."  
  
"I do not understand," Rei looked at the doctor. "Why would Yui Ikari be involved in my creation at all? I would not have been needed if was not absorbed by Unit-01, would I not?"  
  
"That, I'm not sure about," Ritsuko reached for a packed plugsuit on her desk and held it in her hands, staring down at it. "Personally? I think Yui knew that she was going to be absorbed in the Eva Unit. I have no reason to believe that, mind you, since by all appearances no one expected Kyoko Sohryu to be partly absorbed by Unit-02. The Commander seems to believe it was an accident, but... I don't know, Rei, it all seems like she set it up herself," the doctor tossed the plugsuit package at Rei, who caught it effortlessly. "The Activation Test, already having the science behind your creation crafted, everything we know about Third Impact and the nature of Unit-01..." she leaned back in her chair and folded her hands in her lap. "It's all suspicious, honestly."  
  
Rei took the plugsuit out of its vacuum packaging and began to put it on. "Doctor, you do not seem like the suspicious type," she said, knowing full well that Ritsuko was probably the most suspicious person in NERV next to the Commanders. Ritsuko did have the most secrets to hide other than them. "Your trust in the Commander has always been quite high."  
  
There was a pause as Ritsuko breathed something that Rei didn't catch, but the doctor seemed to shake it off. "So was yours, Rei, but over the past several months something about your relationship with him has changed. Everyone's noticed it but they've been afraid to come forward."  
  
Rei pulled the suit up over her hips, struggling with the fabric a bit; she never could get used to these things. "Things have changed. I do not like being called Yui. I find it distasteful."  
  
"Is that all?"  
  
"...no, Doctor Akagi," Rei pulled the suit up higher and put her arms in the gloved sleeves. She made it a point to look at Ritsuko, and the doctor managed to flinch only slightly. "No, it is not. But... I would prefer not to be alone with him anymore." She pulled the suit up around her neck and clicked the wrist button; the suit ejected all of the air within and tightened up against her body. "It is unpleasant," she finished.  
  
"..." The doctor gave Rei a sidelong glance that the girl couldn't read. "I suppose that if it was important, you wouldn't talk to me about it, would you? I've never given you a reason to trust me."  
  
"...no," Rei shook her head. "You have not. It is unfortunate, Doctor Akagi, but I understand why. I am..." she had to try to keep her eyes focused on the faux-blonde, but she found them wandering off instead to a distant corner of the room. "I am uncomfortable to be around, when one knows my secrets. That is why, even though I look forward to meeting Asuka Sohryu and Shinji Ikari, I also feel... uncomfortable," she thought for a second, then nodded. "Friendships, I have been told, are built on trust and honesty, which are things I cannot give. Sohryu would see me as an enemy, Ikari would not understand," she began to walk for the door, setting aside the rising tide of emotions for now. Ritsuko gently grabbed her hand, and Rei stopped.  
  
"It scares you," Ritsuko said quietly. "You've been in this hole for so long that the very idea of making friends hurts almost as much as actually attempting to do so... and with what you know, what you are, it hurts even more."  
  
Rei looked down, finally nodding after some time. And it was true; out of all the ways, all the Cycles, Rei had befriended the two, the secrets of Eva, Lilith, the Dummy Plug, and her, were always things she desperately wished to hide. She couldn't figure out why, but maybe what Ritsuko said had merit: she was terrified of them finding out about her true nature. Normally, part of it was revealed when she inevitably died during Armisael, sometimes before if that Cycle was truly unfortunate, and it was always the same: at best, they would remain friends, but more distant, and at worst... well, she had been Rei IV and Rei V before for a good reason.  
  
"How do you remain friendly with Captain Katsuragi despite having so many secrets?" she finally asked. Ritsuko stood, letting go of Rei's hand.  
  
"I don't," she replied. "Not really. What's between Misato and me... it's just the embers of a dying flame of friendship. Don't mimic what I have with her, Rei. It's... it's not healthy, for either of us. Sooner or later Misato and I are going to grow distant - she'll probably even hate me - so don't go down my road, Rei. It's a lonely one."  
  
"Your relationship with the Commander-" Rei began, but Ritsuko cut her off.  
  
"What relationship?" she asked. "We both know who he cares about the most, Rei, and it's not us. It's never been us, and it'll never be us. He only pretends to care because we're useful to him."  
  
Rei was unaware the relationship between the two had already soured at this point. Was that her doing or another point of Divergence within the Cycle?  
  
"I see," Rei said, although she made it sound questioning to see if Ritsuko would divulge more.  
  
"Do you?" asked the Doctor. "Yesterday, when you told me he called you Yui, I finally understood. We're just dolls to him, Rei. Just... meaningless dolls."  
  
"Asuka hates dolls," Rei said automatically.  
  
"How do you know that?"  
  
"It's... in her psych report, Doctor Akagi," at least, she hoped it was, because if not that would lead to some really awkward questions. "I do not wish to be seen as a doll."  
  
"Neither do I, Rei," Ritsuko opened the door to the room, and both stepped out into the much more brightly lit hallways of NERV's infirmary. "But, some real life advice? Don't let  _anyone_  see you as a doll, Rei. Also, if you really want to try and be friends with Pilot Sohryu, you have a long uphill battle ahead of you."  
  
Rei knew that. She also knew that when you finally broke down those walls, Asuka was among one of the most caring indivduals on the planet, moreso than even Shinji, at least in Rei's eyes. Getting to that heart was akin to using all of the N2 mines on the Earth, however.  
  
It was  ** _worth_  **it.  
  
"Let's go do this Simulation Test before Misato wonders where we disappeared to, Rei."  
  
"Yes."  
  


* * *

 

"This is the interface for the Pallet Rifle," Misato's face was serious. "It's operation is simple; as soon as you get a target lock, pull the trigger. The computer and the Evangelion will handle the rest."  
  
"Understood," Rei replied, cutting the video feed. It had been a while since she had worn a Plugsuit; she always forgot how -tight- it felt in them. It was much simpler to wear nothing at all, since these weren't exactly modest to begin with. Or, as Shinji put it, "it leaves nothing to the imagination, I can see EVERYTHING." Asuka had actually agreed with him on that part. Ah well, it would be irrelevant in the long run, Rei supposed. She leaned back in her chair and lazily held one control stick, firing every time the computer locked onto an "Angel". The CG renderings looked nothing like one, of course, and besides, few Angels were weak to the weapon, especially the ones that were more ambiguous in nature.  
  
Images danced across Rei's vision, but she had already turned the relevant parts of her brain off. Center target, pull switch. Center target, pull switch. Relaxing but not really proving anything, either. Rei's synch score held firm at 33.333%, precisely where she wanted it to be, and a smaller picture to the right of her vision showed Unit-01 mimicking her shots. She still found it odd that she was the pilot of Unit-01, and she had yet to dive into that notebook that... she, had left herself. Apparently. All she knew by now was that she had A: Already altered the timeline and B: Already died twice and she was on round 3. How troublesome. Once she got home, she would read the book in earnest.  
  
Hm. She still needed to get the lock changed.  
  
Misato's face popped up on the left side of her vision. "Rei, could you possibly take this a little seriously?"  
  
"I am taking it seriously, Captain," Rei replied automatically, not really thinking about it. As if on cue, she yawned. "Mostly seriously, Captain."  
  
"Mm-hmm," Misato shook her head. "Well, in any rate, keep doing this for a while; Rits is running some tests to see how the interface is coming along. After we're done here, you can go home for the day."  
  
"Yes, ma'am," Rei yawned again. She pulled a leg up and rested her arm on it, absently pulling the trigger to the rifle. Watching the CG Angel explode into pixels was at least humorous. Rei switched to manual mode and continued to shoot, although now she didn't have to wait for the computer to acquire a target lock. Her time to kill shot up quickly. It wasn't anything amazing; just muscle memory at this point from having done this exercise so many times. Nevermind that she wasn't even supposed to know that there was a manual mode yet, but Rei simply didn't care, and neither would anyone who'd want to do away with her... you know, again. It was fine.  
  
Center target. Pull switch. Center target. Pull switch.  
  
Rei yawned for a third time. She really wanted to synch with Unit-01 directly. Also her notebook.  
  
From the corner of her eye, she saw Misato turn and say something to someone, simultaneously slamming the mute button on the control panel. Rei set the targeting system back to automatic as she stared at the screen. Doctor Akagi walked in and shooed out all of the technicians. Misato looked at the camera and, noticing that Rei was staring back, shut it off.  
That was odd. Unfortunately, by now Rei knew how just about every Evangelion system worked at this point. She reactivated the microphone pickup, but even so she had to really focus to hear their whispers.  
  
"-wants to make friends, huh?" Misato was saying. "I never realized she was so lonely until recently."  
  
"Piloting Eva is a hard life," Ritsuko replied. "It's only natural for a girl her age to want to experience more of the world than what she's been offered."  
  
A pause and some walking around. "I don't think Asuka is really friend material, Rits. She's rude, and unfriendly, and downright mean at times."  
  
"Sure, but she's got something that no one else, does, Misato: She's also an Evangelion pilot. Like it or not, the two have connected destinies. Besides, you should've seen the way her face lit up when she heard I was transferring Sohryu over here. Her heart even skipped a beat. Are we sure that they haven't met before?"  
  
"Not that I'm aware of," Misato said. "She had something of a similar reaction when she stumbled on Asuka's file on my table last night. She was blushing, even. I mean, I don't believe in love at first sight but... has Rei ever shown any interest in ANYONE? Boys or girls?"  
  
"Not that I'm aware of, you could ask one of her classmates though," Ritsuko yawned. "There might be an attraction there, since Pilot Sohryu is the only other one we know of who can do the same things Rei can - better, even, given how much higher her synch scores are."  
  
Misato laughed. "Man, Rei's in for some trouble, then. Asuka is difficult."  
  
"I told her as much, too. I think she enjoys the idea of a challenge. She was smiling all the way to the Simulation Cages. You'd think she was going to get to see an old friend or..." Rei could almost hear Ritsuko grin. "An old lover."  
  
Rei was glad the camera was off to hide the bright shade of red she turned. "Seriously, though," Misato continued. "I kind of hope there's nothing there, and we're just reading too much into it. You know how people are nowadays, since Second Impact killed so many people. Anything... abnormal... is usually not taken well."  
  
"Well, and I can't believe I'm saying this, but..." Ritsuko turned the video back on. Rei had slipped her mask back on and was watching the CG Angels explode into pixels.  
  
"Let her follow her heart, Misato. Lord knows she deserves that much."

 

* * *

 

Having dinner with multiple people was something she was unused to. Normally there would only be one present at best during meals, but this time there were no less than five people sitting with her in one of Tokyo-3's many restaurants, talking more loudly than what she was used to and generally being obnoxious. For whatever reason, Misato and Ritsuko had dragged Rei along with them to this gathering of NERV staff, consisting of what the Captain fondly referred to as "Bridge Bunnies", and told her she didn't have to participate, but it just seemed like a good idea at the time. They had no way of knowing that going home was the first thing on her mind.  
  
She never did bother to learn the guys' names. Only Ibuki, because she was often with Doctor Akagi. Rei propped up on an arm and picked at her noodles quickly, trying really hard to not look extremely bored and probably failing. No one seemed to notice, however.  _Why does Doctor Akagi keep touching me?  
  
Ugh. I hate large gatherings._  
  
One of the men - the short-haired one - was telling some sort of humorous dialogue, and everyone politely laughed. Well, Misato actually thought it was pretty funny but she was also drunk, so everything was funny. She had to wipe away tears she had been laughing so much. Rei never really grasped humor beyond the snarky kind that she had sort of learned over time since it was often self-deprecating and was based off of observations she could share with others, but stories beyond that with some sort of punchline were lost on her. It was fine.  
  
Rei sighed. She really wanted to go home.  
  
"Say, Maya, did you get that for us?" Ritsuko was asking, and the only other female at the table nodded enthusiastically.  
  
"Sure did, boss!" she beamed. "I left it in my car, but I got what you asked for. You think Ayanami will like it?"  
  
_What_. "I'm sorry?" Rei looked up, trying not to look like she had been spacing out this entire time.  
  
"Oh, don't worry about it," Ritsuko was patting Rei's back again. "We just thought it would be best to get you some normal clothes."  
  
"I see," Rei said, not really but she didn't care to argue. She didn't need normal clothes.  
  
"Well I mean if she's gonna have a girlfriend she probably needs to look the part!" Misato slurred, and Rei had to look down at her face turned color. Ritsuko must have kicked Misato under the table because the Captain suddenly shouted "ow!" and pouted.  
  
"Now, now, Rei is just excited to make a new friend, is all," Ritsuko said, only slightly condescendingly. "The Second Child will be here ahead of her Evangelion in a week, so she wants to look nice for her."  
  
"Ayanami doesn't seem the type to want to 'look nice'," one of the guys pointed out. "She wears the same thing every day."  
  
Rei was used to people talking about her as if she wasn't there, but Misato wasn't. "H-hey!" she said, trying her hardest to be sober. "Rei is a teenage girl and deserves... you know, nice stuff and yeah."  
  
It was a valiant effort at least. Ritsuko sighed and shook her head. Rei looked down at her noodles and began to pick at them again. The conversation quickly turned away from her to more mundane matters, and Ritsuko was touching her again, but at least she had gone back to being ignored. Rei didn't like people, she realized. Not adults, anyway. Adults were strange, they didn't make any sense... some of them were objectively terrible people.  
  
Asuka might understand. She had been surrounded by adults. She knew what it was like. It was a subject that never really came up. Maybe one day they'd talk about it in earnest. Rei began to sort through everything the two had talked about, and a thought struck her.  
  
Rei's new sense of self-awareness was starting to get to her. Asuka usually started off not liking Rei for various reasons, but what if she couldn't make Asuka like her this time? What if she continued to hate Rei? There were a lot of subjects they had talked about over the long Cycles of Rei's life, but they usually started off talking about Shinji in some capactity. This time he wasn't here to serve as a base of mutual understanding. It would just be the two of them. There would be no one to bail her out if she made a socialization mistake.  
  
Rei suddenly realized her heart was going nuts. She was nervous. No, she was terrified. Everything could get much, much worse.  
  
There might be a 778th Cycle because Rei would fail. Again.  
  
"Hey, you okay?" Ritsuko asked. She must have felt Rei tense up.  
  
"...yes," Rei lied. "I... dislike large crowds. May we go home now?"  
  
"Sure, but we gotta drag Misato's drunk ass home first," Ritsuko actually smiled at Rei. Like, genuinely, without any sort of fakery in place. It was odd. Rei still couldn't figure out why Ritsuko was being nice to her.  
  
She found she liked it, just a little bit.  
  


* * *

 

Rei closed the door to her apartment. After some consideration, she locked the door, despite knowing it was broken. It put her mind only a little at ease. She walked into the room and looked around. Her satchel had been delivered already, resting on her bed. Pushing aside all of her anxiety, she made a beeline for the satchel and quickly pulled out the notebook she had been waiting to read, along with her new one that she had been using her coded language in. She opened the old one to the first page, rereading what she already had, and flipped through.  
  
The notebook was not as detailed as she would have liked it to be, but Rei surmised that she must have had to write it quickly since she apparently knew she was going to die soon, but not exactly when. The last page written on was only half-finished - no, that wasn't right. All it said was " _Goodbye_ " at the bottom. Ah, so this was as far as she had gotten. Rei felt a stab of something hit her heart as she realized she had gone to her death knowing it was coming, but had managed to steel herself and do it anyway. Rei had come to accept that this life can and did kill her, but at least it was always painless. The self-destruct on Evangelion Unit-00 always ended in a flash of light.  
How much pain did the Commander put her through before he finally allowed her to die? Rei returned to the second page, blocking the morbid thoughts out, and began to read.  
  
_01\. We Deactivated Unit-00 For Now  
I don't know if you know this already; I will not know how much of your memory will be filled with gaps.  
  
Unit-00 will not function. It cannot function. We have taken back the part of us that was lost to it. The Eva will not move because it has no soul. When the time is right, you can reactivate it by giving that part back. You should do this before Shinji comes home, because I do not know if the Eva will take him instead._  
  
Rei hadn't considered that, but it made sense. She copied the idea down in cipher and continued to read.  
  
_02\. Trust Unit-01  
We have reached an understanding. We opened our heart to Yui Ikari, and she was angry. We think she still wants to go forward with Third Impact, however, and she may encourage you somehow. Yui Ikari cannot speak, but she can send you emotions._  
  
Fair enough. Rei suspected as much anyway. She turned the page and had to do a double-take. The writing had changed from one of calm to one of anger. Some of the ink had smeared. Rei had been crying when she wrote this. She took a look at the entry title, and shut the notebook, dropping it on the floor like it was on fire. It was about -that- and Rei wasn't sure she was ready to read it. What if it was worse than she imagined? What if everyone knew and they were secretly mocking her? Why did she even care about that? Rei shook her head, trying to clear her mind, and she picked the book back up. She skipped the page and read entry 04, and a different kind of surprise hit her.  
  
Asuka's name, address... and phone number. Somehow, Rei had acquired these things. She couldn't imagine how. On the opposite page was Shinji's. The next page only had two lines of text.  
  
_I miss them.  
Call them for me. Please._  
  
Rei was on her feet before she realized it and made her way to the wall-mounted phone. She set the notebook down on the counter and stared at it. Shinji; she would call him first. She couldn't tell him a thing, but to hear his voice -  
  
_No_. "No," she said. It would make no sense. It would confuse and terrify him. But... calling Asuka would make sense, wouldn't it? It should! Asuka was about to be shipped here and greeting her ahead of time could kickstart their friendship before she even gets here! Surely!  
  
Rei picked up the phone and dialed the number. After Second Impact, number codes were normalized across the planet, allowing anyone to call anyone else as long as there was a satellite connection or a hardline there. The world had changed, and technology had changed with it.  
  
It was the middle of the day in Germany, so it didn't take long for someone to answer. "What?"  
  
Well, okay then. "Pilot Sohryu?" Rei kept her voice level. It was easy to recall how belligerent Asuka was.  
  
But goddamn if it didn't make her heart leap.  
  
"Yeah, whaddya want?" Asuka's Japanese was... not great, so Rei code-switched to German to ease her fellow pilot.  
  
"I am Pilot Ayanami," she continued. "You are coming to Tokyo-3 soon, yes?"  
  
"... oh! The First Child!" Asuka sounded much more enthusiastic. "How'd you get this number?"  
  
"We both work for NERV," Rei said, not entirely sure how exactly she got the number.  
  
"Yeah, true. So what's up?"  
  
Rei realized that she didn't need to keep up appearances here. She let her mask drop, and she sighed. She almost giggled too. Almost.  
  
"I just wanted to greet my fellow pilot," she said easily. "I've heard great things about the Second Child."  
  
"Well, I'll be the first to tell you that those rumors are COMPLETELY TRUE!" Asuka boasted proudly. Rei heard something crash in the background. "HEY BE CAREFUL WITH THAT! Sorry, we're packing up right now."  
  
"You're already preparing to move?" Rei asked.  
  
"Jeeze, don't you sound hopeful," Asuka teased. "Yeah, we got the order earlier, so we're packing up now. I've gotta stay for a few more days to finalize some synch processes but we should be there... what's today? We'll be there by the weekend, anyway. HEY, IDIOT, I PAID A LOT OF MONEY FOR THAT."  
  
Rei winced at the shout. She realized she was twirling the cord between her fingers. "I look forward to meeting you, Pilot Sohryu," she said, trying to remember propriety.  
  
"Yeah? Cool!" Asuka laughed and Rei felt the butterflies. "It'd be nice to meet another pilot! We can talk about stuff we can't with others, and... yeah, it'd be cool to meet you, I think!" Rei realized that at this point Asuka hadn't felt truly wanted yet, so the thought probably enticed yet terrified her, just as it did to the First Child.  
  
"Unit-01's first live exercise is this Saturday," Rei mentioned. "I would like you to be there for it."  
  
"You're just now getting to that? Wow," Asuka sounded a bit surprised. "We've already done a few live missions for Unit-02; nothing crazy, just walking and stuff. You guys must be way behind. But hey, yeah, we'll probably be there in time for that."  
  
"I would like that," Rei was smiling. She was smiling like a goofball, in fact. She could already hear Asuka and Misato teasing her about it. "I know this is sudden, but I recently acquired your number, so..." she trailed off, suddenly unsure where to go from here. "I... did not really plan this far ahead."  
  
Asuka laughed again. "Starstruck?" she asked. "It's perfectly understandable. Most people are when they meet me," she could almost hear Asuka flipping her hair arrogantly. "I'll see you this weekend, then! Hey, is there anywhere good to shop there? I'll need a new wardrobe when I show up to wow everyone."  
  
"I've been busy with work, so I'm not sure..." Rei trailed off again. "We could find out together?"  
  
"It's a date!" Asuka said, excitedly. "I'll see you then, Ay- hey, what should I call you? I know you Japanese have weird naming conventions."  
  
"Well, we are both pilots, yes? So I think we should also be friends. Rei will be fine."  
  
"Alright, then, Rei it is! I'll see you this weekend!"  
  
Asuka hung up the phone. Rei stared at it for a moment and put it back.  
  
Asuka was coming here, and she was excited. Rei, on the other hand...  
  
Rei took a deep breath. For the first time since waking up yesterday, Rei was happy. Almost deliriously so. She put away the notebook - there would be time for that later. There was always time for that later, since she couldn't really do anything about most of the information now... although honestly, she just wanted to ride this happiness.  
  
Things were actually looking up. Asuka would understand her. It would take effort, but they would become close. Rei was willing to undergo that effort. The hard part would come from her, if she were to be honest. Rei hid the notebook in the cabinet and sat on her bed, tossing the satchel and the bag of whatever Ibuki had gotten her to the floor. She had to keep her emotions in check around Asuka, since her feelings were based on Cycles with events that hadn't happened yet, and there was no guarantee that they would happen here.  
  
Rei began to undress as she considered her next move. She had made contact, and it was positive, and she needed to focus on that. As long as she didn't 'weird out' Asuka, she could easily make her way in. Rei reminded herself that her primary objective was to get Shinji and Asuka both mentally to the point where they wouldn't allow Third Impact to transpire. For that to happen they needed to be happy together and not want to become one with the rest of humanity. As much as she wanted both pilots for herself, Rei needed to not be selfish and let them have each other.  
  
But there were things she knew about them that she wasn't supposed to know yet. She knew how they would feel in certain situations. She knew how they would act when presented with new problems.  
  
She knew the way they smelled when they held her at night, driving away the demons.  
  
Rei got into bed, pulling the covers over herself, and finally allowed herself to laugh. A dark part of her heart wanted to rebel and drive her back to depression, but she refused to let it. She finally had something to look forward to, not something to be ashamed of.  
  
No one could take that from her.  
  
No one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so, in the case of Gendo Ikari, because I KNOW this is going to come up.
> 
> So I have a lot of reasons. Some of them are plot related because the fact that he's doing this is actually supposed to be super abnormal. There's a few that are basically "BACK IN MY DAY" so I'll focus on them.
> 
> When I was watching NGE waaaay back in the day, the first way I thought of Gendo was an incredibly creepy person, regardless of everything else. When I brought this up to some people who were hanging around the various old Eva chatrooms, it was generally assumed that Gendo was, at best, a pedophile who didn't act on it (and there were people who shipped this, btw, and G/R was actually reasonably popular - things like the "Israfel Special" would have been impossible back then, as well, because people were more divided between Rei and Asuka), and at worst, abusive. So at least as far back as 2001-ish that was the prevailing belief.
> 
> I was way too young to be watching Eva, being about 13, so I basically listened to what all the adults with the room were saying about him. I've never really been able to move past it, I suppose? Looking around nowadays, people tend to focus on Gendo's manipulative aspects rather than his creepy ones, which might be another factor. There's also the whole "deliberately cloning Rei from Yui" that was enough for some people to be like "that's pretty fucked up yo".
> 
> So I guess from a meta perspective, the way I'm writing him wouldn't have been considered as... unusual back then as it is now? A bit edgelordy, to be sure, but not out of the realm of possibility. Honestly the biggest mistake I made was probably actually writing it in fairly explicit detail: as an Eva author much more popular than I'll ever be told me once (paraphrasing because this was like 15+ years ago), "The implication he's abusing her is much more terrifying than showing it. Unless you're Psaiyan, but don't be him. He's fucked up."
> 
> (Psaiyan was an author who penned a multi-chapter G/R lemon that was really, really popular.)
> 
> Basically what I'm saying is the old Eva fanbase was really, really weird and that's the fanbase I was a part of.
> 
> To further explain, let me break down the points:
> 
> 1\. Supposedly (and this is coming to me from a former psych major, idk if he ever graduated) Rei exhibits classic signs of being sexually abused. The signs mentioned were her inability to care about herself, the crummy status of her apartment, and her withdrawn demeanor. The canon explanation, given by Ritsuko, is that Rei is "inept at living", but even taking that into consideration, the signs are troubling.
> 
> 2\. Her loyalty to a man that sees her as nothing more than a tool can be seen as a sign of a domestic abuse victim, aka the "battered wife" syndrome.
> 
> 3\. Gendo is fiercely controlling and keeps Rei away from any positive influences, up to and including Shinji.
> 
> 4\. This one is exclusive to this story only. Each Cycle has some differences from the previous one. Some of them you've seen, and Gendo's personality is one of them. Assuming canon!Gendo isn't loli for Rei, this Cycle brings out more of his innate cruelty and dispassion. In short, this Gendo is NOT the one Rei remembers. The Gendo Rei remembers is driven and proud, reaching for a noble goal - that of Instrumentality, to reunite with his wife. This one shares that sentiment, but is willing to indulge in more evil acts.
> 
> 5\. Rei Ayanami is deliberately modeled off of Yui Ikari, sharing DNA with her. Functionally it could be seen as him having the daughter he wanted instead of the son he got, but given Gendo's personality that doesn't fit, since he cares little about others. However, he cares about Rei because he has a use for her, and who said the only use was Instrumentality? Gendo is a fundamentally broken human, and in some moments he might look at Rei and see Yui instead. Hence why, in this story, when he's abusing her he's not calling her Rei, he's calling her Yui.
> 
> In Gendo's mind, he's having sex with his wife; in his mind, he's not raping Rei. That's because in this Cycle, he views Rei as little more than... a doll. A tool of his using, whenever he sees fit. So to him, calling her Yui and having his way with her is par for the course. She's injured by his hand in this as well, because she fought back, and broke the illusion briefly.
> 
> And yes, the reason she's already Rei III is because Rei II also fought back, multiple times. This Cycle's Gendo couldn't have that. Eventually, the doll had to be put down, in his mind.


End file.
